The controversial Burning Man-inspired festival known as “Falls on Fire” can continue to be held in Papaikou after the 91直播 County Windward Planning Commission voted 4-1 on Thursday in favor of issuing a special use permit clearing the way for the event to proceed.
The countercultural event hosted by video game mogul Andrew Tepper has drawn hundreds of people to his 1,400-acre property along the Hamakua Coast north of Hilo every November for the past three years to enjoy fire dancing, live music, art installations and sustainability workshops.
“It’s great,” Tepper said after the vote. “I think the commissioners understood what we’re trying to do, and that we are trying to be good neighbors, gentle to the land, and create something that the community can come together around.”
When asked what motivated him to stick with the festival despite years of obstacles and opposition, he said it’s all about letting old and new friends experience the beauty of his land.
“I just like doing events like this,” he said. “I get a huge kick out of, you know, seeing — like last year 300 people came together and played for a weekend, and being able to make that all happen, it’s very gratifying to just share this land. … I can come to 91直播 whenever I want, (but) I didn’t realize when I started this that a lot of people even from around here don’t get to play like this so, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain what is so fun about it, but it’s the highlight of my year.”
The four-day celebration culminates in the ceremonial burning of a “symbolic effigy” similar to the world-famous Burning Man — a weeklong festival held annually in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert in late August and early September. Tepper has attended the desert celebration for more than two decades and drew much of the inspiration for Falls on Fire from it.
But after the 2023 festival in Papaikou, complaints from neighbors and a lack of permitting threatened to shut the event down. In September 2024, Tepper hired Land Planning 91直播 to apply for a special use permit with two main components. The first sought to legitimize that year’s festival with camping for up to 500 attendees.
The permit’s second component — unrelated to the event — sought authorization to store commercial vehicles on the property, a large section of which is leased to a local rancher who uses its pastures to graze cattle. The tenant stores several commercial vehicles and pieces of heavy equipment on a half-acre section of the property in what the planning director has described as a “heavy equipment rental base yard.”
Despite repeated warnings from the county not to hold the 2024 festival until the permit was issued, Tepper proceeded to throw Falls on Fire that year anyway from Nov. 8 to 11, which saw around 200 attendees. Hosting the 2023 and 2024 events racked up $34,00 in county fines for violations involving camping, amplified sound and advertising on property zoned for agricultural use.
In 2025, Tepper threw yet another gathering while the permitting process was still pending, choosing to call it a “private” event this time and refusing to allow county inspectors onto the property while festivities were underway.
Neighbors James McMahon and his wife, Lichuan Huang, got so tired of the constant heavy truck noise, dust and exhaust fumes — and the once-a-year barrage of traffic, trespassing and loud music — that they filed for a contested case hearing in an attempt to stop the permit from being issued.
That hearing was held on Nov. 13 last year in Hilo, and its hearing officer handed down a “findings of fact” in February. This laid out a long list of conditions that must be met for the festival’s 2026 iteration to proceed, including requirements for parking, road maintenance, insurance, quiet hours, fire control, portable toilets, notification timeframes for various county departments, and the payment of all past fines.
None of this seemed to phase Tepper, though, who said after Thursday’s planning commission meeting that he plans to hold the festival in summer 2027 and skip this fall due to the amount of logistics and planning involved.
“Most of those are pretty easy,” he said about the permit’s conditions. “It’s pay a survey company to put out flags, buy an insurance policy, contact officials to do a traffic plan. There’s nothing especially difficult. It’s paperwork and buying stuff, paying for stuff so, yeah, nothing especially hard.”
The commission’s decision was bad news for McMahon and Huang, whose home lies roughly 30 feet away from a road easement running through their cacao farm that provides access to the festival site and the “heavy equipment rental base yard.” This sends a steady stream of trucks right past their living room, which they say is more bothersome than the event itself.
At Thursday’s meeting, the couple explained to the commissioners how their farm has been negatively affected by the land uses for which Tepper was seeking approval.
They said they harvest the pods from their 700 cacao trees to make chocolate, selling the bars locally. This process requires various stages of outdoor processing, which are threatened by contamination from the passing trucks.
“Chocolate is a very sensitive product,” Huang told the commissioners. “The process of fermentation and drying is open air, is out there, and will be affected by negative environmental factors — the diesel smell, the dust.”
Conflicts like this, McMahon said, are precisely why agricultural and industrial lands are segregated.
“There’s a reason for zoning,” he said. “There’s a reason why we separate agricultural, residential, and industrial and commercial uses. We don’t usually mix them together, because often they’re not compatible with each other, and I think that’s part of the fundamental issue that we have here.”
Testifiers at the meeting were split, with some sympathizing with the couple’s plight while others highlighted the cultural and artistic merits of the festival.
One opposition testifier was Papaikou resident Linda Day, who expressed concern about the hygiene of festival-goers and possible contamination of a stream running through the property.
“I did wonder where 500 people over the course of four days are going to bathe,” she said. “Because that river … goes all the way down to the ocean, and there are people below it who are farming. … So I’m just thinking that these people are going to be in this river, 500 people, you’re surely not going to get everybody to not pollute that river with sunscreen and peeing and whatever all else.”
Another testifier, Casey Jedynak of Captain Cook, said he had attended all three Falls on Fire events and saw them as expressions of art, generosity and harmless fun.
“Every year I brought a different light sculpture,” Jedynak said. “We brought a mushroom the first two years and a jellyfish the (third) year,” he said. “I helped run a sound camp. All three years we cooked food for attendees, made gifts to give away, and hosted dance parties at our camp.”
Claims of the festival being predominantly attended by off-islanders, he said, were inaccurate.
“This is a Big Island event,” Jedynak said. “The artists, the sound camps, land crews, the security and most of the attendees are from the Big Island and neighboring islands, with some mainland people mixed in. This isn’t a mainland festival being imported here. It’s where local artists like myself show our work and connect with community. Falls on Fire is a place for people to share their talents and gifts.”
Commissioners asked attorneys representing Tepper an extensive list of questions about the festival and heavy equipment storage, ranging from public safety and security to water availability to food preparation to noise control.
After making a motion for a vote, Vice Chair Chantel Perrin asked Tepper to sit before the commission and offered him some advice.
“As you can imagine, as a Kanaka Maoli that was kind of hard because I know where my people stand on this,” Perrin said. “But I’m gonna put it on you to steward the land and stand right with the people so that heaven will come down on you. Do it right, do it pono, stay open … please keep those doors open with your community, and if at all possible, please pour back into this community, too.”
Email Stefan Verbano at stefan.verbano@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
