State briefs for July 27

Work continues to keep
seabirds off power lines

LIHUE, Kauai (AP) — Kauai utility officials are installing glow-in-the-dark devices to prevent endangered nocturnal seabirds from crashing into power lines.

The diverters help Newell’s shearwater, Hawaiian petrel and band-rumped storm petrel avoid power lines after dark.

Kauai is considered an important breeding habitat for all of those species.

The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative installed diverters on 109 power line spans last year and expects to install diverters on another 628 spans by the end of 2021.

The cooperative said it is using reflective diverters that glow in the dark near residential areas, commercial districts and public roads.

In remote areas,
it’s using LED diverters that charge via a
solar panel during the day to produce light that’s visible to birds at night.

“Many of the installations will occur in remote areas that won’t be visible to residents,” said utility spokeswoman Beth Tokioka. “For any installations near residences, we’re contacting these members directly by mail prior to the scheduled work.”

Bird diverters are estimated to be 40% to 90% effective in minimizing power-line collisions, depending on type and location, according to Tokioka.

Pearl Harbor
casualty remains ID’d
as Calif. sailor

STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) — The remains of a U.S. Navy sailor from California who was killed in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor have been identified, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Friday.

Petty Officer 1st Class Charles E. Hudson, 39, of Stockton was assigned to the USS Oklahoma and died when the battleship moored at Ford Island was attacked by Japanese torpedo planes and quickly capsized.

A total of 429 crew members were killed. The Navy continued to recover remains until June 1944 and interred them in two cemeteries.

Unidentified remains were disinterred in 1947 but laboratory staff were only able to confirm the identities of 35 men from the Oklahoma and the unidentified were interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl.

The unknowns were again exhumed in 2015 and Hudson’s remains were subjected to anthropological and DNA analysis.
Source: Hawaii Tribune Herald