Sand Island was known as Quarantine
Island during the nineteenth century when it was used to quarantine
ships believed to hold contagious diseases. Nonetheless, bubonic
plague (aka Yersinia pestis) reached Chinatown in December,
1899. Next to the Pearl Harbor attack, that outbreak of plague was
the greatest public-safety disaster in Hawaiian history.
With no crematory in Honolulu, the
bodies of the first several plague victims were burned in a spare
furnace at Honolulu Iron Works. Within a few days, Iron Works
employees constructed a crematorium on Quarantine Island for
disposing of the dead. At the time, Quarantine Island was a reeking
sand bar surrounded by stagnant salt-water flats, a "wide swamp,
filled with every kind of objectionable refuse, including the
decaying bodies of animals," observed the Hawaiian Star
newspaper.
In an effort to contain the epidemic,
the government started a series of controlled burns. When one of
these fires got out of hand on January 20, 1900, the result was the
Great Chinatown Fire,
which destroyed almost all of Chinatown.
An exact number of victims from that
outbreak isn't known. According to a report published some time
later, 337 people in Hawaii were known to have contracted bubonic
plague. Of these, 34 survived, a mortality rate of 90 percent.
The last known human case of bubonic
plague in the islands was in 1947 in Kamuela. Vector-control
authorities continue to routinely test for plague along Honolulu's
waterfront. They have just notified the Health Department that
another outbreak is imminent unless you locate the source as soon
as possible, and make sure it stays quarantined!
The source of this contagion is currently in hiding in hopes of
avoiding capture. The following is your only clue to its location:
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