The military rig carrying a hydraulic excavator that struck a pedestrian overpass may have caused another accident Tuesday before triggering one of the worst traffic jams in Honolulu history.

Police provided few details yesterday, but said they are investigating an accident in which the driver possibly fled the scene. Capt. Frank Fujii, a Honolulu Police Department spokesman, could not confirm if that accident involved the same driver of the military vehicle.

The police probe is the second investigation under way in the overpass accident that closed all west-bound lanes for 13 hours — leaving tens of thousands of people spending up to eight hours trying to get home. The Army also has launched an investigation.

So far, it has cost the state about $150,000 to quickly tear down the structurally damaged overpass.

State Department of Transportation engineers yesterday traced the military rig's route and found evidence that at least four other overhead signs and highway lights had been damaged, although it was not clear if the same vehicle was responsible. State and Army officials denied requests for specific route information, saying only that the rig left Pearl Harbor headed for Schofield Barracks.

Gov. Linda Lingle said the same vehicle had traveled on the freeway when it was sent from Schofield Barracks to Pearl Harbor on its way to Kwajalein Atoll. At that time, an elevated part was detached so it could clear the freeway bridges and overpasses, she said. On Tuesday, Lingle said, the same part was not detached, thereby giving the excavator more height.

Thousands of drivers yesterday swapped survival tales around office water coolers and on Internet Web sites.

There were reports of tourists walking to Honolulu International Airport to catch their flights, hundreds of people sleeping in their cars, a man pushing a motorcycle on the freeway, people stranded for hours on city buses, and 15-mile drives that took longer than a flight to Las Vegas.

"It took me almost four hours to get from Dole Cannery to my home in 'Ewa Beach," said Emmelyn Damaso, telling what sounded like a typical commuter horror story. "We left the movie theater before 9:15 p.m. and didn't get home until after 12:45 in the morning. It was just bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go all the way on Nimitz and Kamehameha Highway until we reached Pearlridge."

LINGLE APOLOGIZES

Along with multiple investigations, there were multiple apologies, and acknowledgement from the state that it should have a master plan for dealing with such emergencies.

Lingle apologized for the "massive disruption" caused by shutting down the freeway, but said that state Transportation Director Rod Haraga made the right call.

"While it was an uncomfortable decision to make ... it was an easy decision to make. We could not let people continue to traverse when we knew that that much concrete could be falling on the freeway," Lingle said.

She acknowledged that there was a tremendous communications problem among responding agencies Tuesday. The visitor industry, she said, should have been notified of the closure so tourists would not miss flights, and large employers should have been told about the accident in an effort to prevent large numbers of workers from leaving at the same time.

"Although in a normal civil emergency we have tremendous communications with the visitor industry, because people were thinking of this in the traffic context, I don't think the same communications system went into play as it would if it was a hurricane, tsunami warning or any kind of a civil emergency," Lingle said. "The lesson learned is we need to take it in that same way."

DOT Director Haraga said state and city officials worked together to develop alternative routes and to adjust the timing of traffic signals on nearby highways and feeder streets. However, state officials do not have a master plan for dealing with such emergencies, he said.

"It would be impossible to have a contingency plan for every situation that comes up," he said. "But we'll do an after-action assessment and meet next week with Civil Defense officials to start discussing some alternatives we can use in the future."

'WE DID BEST WE COULD'

The Police Department also plans to determine whether more could have been done to relieve the traffic jam. Fujii said 28 Pearl City police officers helped direct traffic on Kamehameha Highway and other roadways Tuesday night.

"We did the best we could with the resources we had," Fujii said. "It just was so totally unexpected."

DOT spokesman Ishikawa described the accident as the "perfect storm — an accident at the worst place at the worst time."

The governor said she did not know how much it would cost to replace the overpass. Lingle said she met briefly with state Attorney General Mark Bennett yesterday, and the state will look into recovering the costs from the military.

Lingle said Haraga and Maj. Gen. Robert Lee, Hawai'i's adjutant general and head of Civil Defense, plan to meet next week to discuss the possibility of contraflowing the freeway in times of emergencies. But she said there are many safety issues that will have to be addressed before a contraflow plan is implemented.

"It's not a simple undertaking," she said. "It's not like contraflowing one lane of traffic on Nimitz Highway, for instance."

The operator of the military truck was driving without a required permit to transport the oversized vehicle but yesterday had not been issued any police citations.

The rig from the Army's 82nd Engineering Company at Schofield was making a routine transit from Pearl Harbor when it hit the bottom of the 16-foot-3/4-inch-high overpass. The maximum permitted height of vehicles passing under the structure is 14 feet, state officials said.

The Army apology for the accident and traffic woes came yesterday morning.

"We offer our regrets and apologies to all the residents of O'ahu who were inconvenienced by this accident," said Army spokesman Lt. Col. John C. Williams. "As part of this investigation, we are reviewing all procedures with the goal of preventing future accidents of this type."

While the Army said it had not yet determined what went wrong, one civilian crane operator who works for the military told The Advertiser that the rig should never have been on the freeway.

"That's an absolute no-no," said Henry Ching, a civil service crane operator at Fort Shafter for 42 years who transports his rig to Schofield Barracks every year for inspection and maintenance. "The military has designated truck routes that require the use of Kamehameha Highway and Kunia Road instead of the freeway," he said, adding that military operators are also required to obtain all state permits and do a visual inspection of the route before transporting any heavy equipment.

TEAR-DOWN DECISION

Haraga said the DOT acted quickly to take corrective action after being notified of the accident.

"We have a list of contractors to use in an emergency," he said. "As soon as we heard about it, we were on the scene and when we saw the extent of the damage, we quickly made a decision to tear down the overpass."

Emergency procurement provisions allowed DOT to contract for removal of the damaged overpass in near-record time, Haraga said. After DOT engineers determined that the pedestrian overpass could collapse onto the freeway below, crews from Hawaiian Dredging worked through the night to remove damaged concrete and cables of the overpass, which is generally used by a handful of students attending 'Aiea High School on one side of the freeway and Alvah A. Scott Elementary School on the other.

Crews built a scaffold on the side of the structure, cut the damaged concrete and cables into three 20,000-pound pieces and lowered them to the ground, Haraga said. "We knew the impact was going to be devastating so we moved as quickly as we could," Haraga said. "We definitely intend to rebuild the overpass in the future."

By 4 a.m. yesterday, officials had opened all freeway lanes in both directions. Morning rush-hour traffic was reported heavy but moving, despite the fact that the state did not use its Zipper and Nimitz Highway contraflow lanes.

While the demolition crew worked through the night, thousands of motorists were stranded in their cars as up to five lanes of westbound traffic on both Moanalua and the H-1 freeways merged into one exit lane on each freeway. Many people reported sitting for hours in the stalled traffic or pulling off to the side of the road to go to sleep.

MORE ACCIDENTS

"There were a lot of frustrated people," Ishikawa said. He added, "A situation like that can go quickly from a simmer to a boil, but fortunately people were cooperative."

Police reported several accidents, but no injuries. "It was the first time I ever saw an accident at 1 mph," one stalled motorist reported.

"Man, it was bad; by far the worst jam I've ever seen on the freeway," said KSSK traffic reporter Jason Yotsuda. "Home-bound traffic finally cleared out at 3 a.m., and then people had to turn right around and head back to work."

Yesterday's morning rush hour began much earlier than usual as drivers heeded warnings to start early, Yotsuda said. "There were several small accidents and lots of rubbernecking, but even so it didn't back up as much as expected," he said.

"I guess a lot of people decided to simply stay home."

Adding to the chaos of the day was the discovery of a body inside a van parked just a few feet from the excavator.

The city Medical Examiner's Office yesterday identified the man as Gene DeLapena, 47, of Honolulu. Police said foul play is not suspected, but a cause of death has not been determined.

Staff writers Mary Vorsino, William Cole and Peter Boylan contributed to this report.

Reach Curtis Lum at culum@honoluluadvertiser.com and Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.