Members of the County Council questioned Fire Chief Kazuo Todd on Tuesday about the Hawaii Fire Department’s ability to prevent or respond to a wildfire on the scale of the August blaze that devastated Lahaina.
The answer, he said, is complicated.
“Yeah, just give us like $20 or $30 million,” Todd told the council’s Government Operations and External Affairs Committee, a statement he later told the Tribune-Herald was “half in jest.”
Todd said that while an influx of money would obviously help the department’s mission, it doesn’t have the capacity to spend that much money in a given year.
“It’s not as simple as just throwing money at the fire department and expecting them to solve a situation like Lahaina,” Todd said.
While the department is pursuing funding from all sources — Todd said he is asking the state’s Community Wildfire Defense Grant program for about $7 million — he said the department and county should be looking at more holistic strategies to improve fire prevention now rather than wait to respond to a future disaster.
He guessed that if Maui County is even able to restore 25% of the homes destroyed in the Lahaina fire within five years, that would be very fast.
“It is a very long road to recovery in these mass disasters,” Todd said. “It is best to prevent them from happening.”
For example, Todd suggested that new county laws might be needed to allow it to proactively deal with abandoned dwellings that pose a fire hazard, along with revisiting building codes and bolstering public outreach
At the same time, Todd acknowledged that there are holes in the department’s resources, particularly personnel.
On average, there are about 113 firefighters on duty throughout the island, and the department’s minimum allowable threshold is 105.
When the number of on-duty firefighters drops below 105, Todd said the department must pay other firefighters overtime to cover the shortfall, something he said happens “every day.”
But Todd told the Tribune-Herald that those numbers are even smaller than they appear. Because Big Island firefighters also are trained as emergency medical technicians, roughly 32 of the 105 staffers on duty at any given time are on ambulance duty.
“They’ll assist on fires if they’re able, but because their roles are as medical professionals, we will have them break off from a fire to go to an EMS call,” Todd said.
Although Todd said the extensive use of overtime is not necessarily bad in and of itself — he said it may be cheaper in the long run than training additional staff — he noted that it is troubling the department is so constantly understaffed.
He also said that poses another kind of safety risk: Firefighters who are overworked and stressed from constantly clocking overtime may not be at their best in case of emergency.
Although Todd didn’t have specific answers about how capable the fire department is of preventing a wildfire disaster, council members agreed that prevention must come from all levels, right down to the individual resident.
Hamakua Councilwoman Heather Kimball noted that residents playing fast and loose with fire — burning trash, cooking in their backyards, all during a drought — only makes wildfires more likely.
“This is an everybody issue,” Kimball said. “We’ve got to be spending resources on public education and making communities aware that it isn’t just a government thing. Whether it’s preventative for your own home or your own community, we’ve all got to be investing in that.”
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
