A loud crash woke Kalihi Valley resident Allyson Silva at about 3 a.m. one day in early July. An 80-foot-tall tree had split and a huge chunk of it had fallen into her yard, narrowly missing the house.

"It was so massive," she said.

When her family went out at first light, they could see that the tree had cleaved from across Kamanaiki Stream and a stone wall to reach into the yard.

Silva saw how close the big tree had come to her windows and reported the problem to her landlady, Sarah Kaneshiro, who lives just up the road.

Since then Silva and Kaneshiro have worried that the rest of the tree — possibly an opiuma — will come down on the Murphy Street home and this time hurt somebody. Over the past three months, Kaneshiro has called about a dozen people and agencies including the police, the city and the state.

"I've been getting all the runaround," she said, shaking her head as she looked up at the huge tree.

The only thing she knows so far is that nobody will take responsibility for the tree. "It's going to be too late if it falls," Kaneshiro said.

Silva, who runs a home childcare business, said she and her family stay out of the yard near the tree. And knowing about the Norfolk pine that crashed into a Manoa home in March and critically injured a 12-year-old girl makes her even more nervous.

"With this wind lately, it's just scary," Silva said.

An Advertiser check of online property tax records showed that the tree is on a parcel of land that is 3,187 square feet and runs along that section of the stream, but the owner is listed as unknown, with no recorded payment of the $100 minimum annual tax.

Further Advertiser research at the state Bureau of Conveyances confirmed that the property has been listed as a separate parcel since 1966 and has been "ownership unknown" all that time.

City spokesman Mark Matsunaga said the city is taking the matter seriously but still researching what can be done.

"We'd like to help Mrs. Kaneshiro but we don't know enough right now," he said. "We understand her frustration."

Matsunaga said the ownership of the land is a sticking point because the city doesn't usually spend public money to trim trees on private property. "Until the ownership is clarified, there's just so much we can do," he said. "It is a bureaucratic nightmare because nobody can remember a case like this."

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources also sent out investigators to check on the tree, first in July and again this week after Kaneshiro called Bureaucracy Buster. But the first time police and the state went out, neighbors told police the tree was on their property and they would help trim it.

So that stopped the case for both government agencies, according to Capt. Frank Fujii of the Honolulu Police Department.

Debbie Ward, DLNR spokeswoman, said the state researched further and found that the parcel was part of Royal Patent 2509. Ward said ownership passed from the Hawaiian monarchy to private owners in the late 1800s.

Matsunaga said the city wants to help but is concerned about setting a legal precedent by going onto private property, even if the ownership is unknown.

Ward said her reading of the state law indicates that the state does not have jurisdiction over the stream areas and their banks. The law indicates that the county or private landowners are responsible for stream maintenance.

Matsunaga said the city will send out a crew today to assess whether the tree poses an imminent danger.

Ward agrees that this case is unusual because usually private ownership can be traced.

But that's not much help to Kaneshiro, who estimates that hiring a private company to take out the tree would cost thousands of dollars. Without some action, Kaneshiro believes the rest of the tree will come down. "I guarantee you it will fall," she said.

Kaneshiro said city complaint investigator Julie Lau showed the most interest of any official until this week, but even she couldn't find an answer. Lau said, "Nobody's taking responsibility for it; no one's paying taxes on it; nobody owns it."

Kaneshiro hopes to find some answers before the rest of the tree falls.

If you have a question or a problem and need help getting to the right person, you can reach The Bureaucracy Buster one of three ways:

Write to:

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Honolulu, HI 96813

E-mail: buster@honoluluadvertiser.com

Phone: 535-2454 and leave a message. Be sure to give us your name and daytime telephone number in case we need more information.

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.