A Handi-Van hero, and a warning

The heroic driver who saved herself and two passengers from a burning Handi-Van said she’s not worried that her replacement vehicle might also erupt in flames.

We sure hope Georgette Chun is correct, but this is the third city Handi-Van that has caught fire on the road in the past three years.

It’s the first time that passengers were on board, and they’re lucky that the calm, quick-acting Chun was the driver.

With smoke seeping into the van, Chun got her passengers out shortly before the vehicle was fully consumed by flames.

This close call is sure to compel rapid certification for new Handi-Vans that the city has ready to roll but cannot dispatch because they are not fully licensed.

Do tall towers portend trouble?

The many high-rises planned for Kakaako and Waikiki aren’t all necessarily "skyscrapers," but they do reflect a building boom of the sort described by economist Andrew Lawrence’s Skyscraper Index, started in 1999, which links construction of the world’s tallest buildings to economic busts.

Looking at the many tall buildings being planned here, you might think the state’s economy is going great, and in some ways it is. But beware.

Lawrence postulated that the rise of skyscrapers coinciding with the construction of the world’s top towers is a harbinger of economic recessions — the Empire State Building and the Great Depression, for example, and today’s record holder, Burj Khalifa in Dubai, completed during the current global recession.

Uh-oh. Saudi Arabia is raising the world’s tallest building in Jeddah. The Kingdom Tower is expected to open in 2019.