COM 0521.005 2002-2004 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Dear Congressman Ed Case, Your visit to Naalehu closely follows a recent meeting of the Volunteer Fire Chiefs Association in which federal recognition and funding was discussed. We would like to bring to your attention the current status of firefighting on the Big Island. The Big Island, due to its physical size, economic isolation and predominance of rural agricultural land is vastly underserved in fire suppression services. When concerned citizens in various local communities recognized that the regular fire department was understaffed and engine response time was beyond standards set by national homeowners insurance, a volunteer force was established. The County of Hawaii Fire Department, already financially and task saturated, supports the volunteer firefighting departments with training, truck and equipment maintenance, and willing acceptance of assistance at fire and emergency incidents island-wide. Of major concern at this time are the following fire departments who have no actual physical structure or station to store firefighting vehicles ("apparatus", in the official lingo) and could use federal financial aid to correct this situation: Fern Acres VFD Paauilo VFD Kona Paradise VFD Pahala VFD _ ~iT ~y- Milolii VFD Puuanahulu VFD c~,~ v c~~~n~~' Naalehu VFD r=~~p. Given a proper storage facility, the increased parts expense and effort to maintain vehicles damaged by daily UV and salt air effects would be almost totally eliminated. Compounding that, the Hawaii County Fire Department has limited manning to perform regular maintenance upon any vehicles operated by a volunteer station. Most volunteer stations maintain the vehicles assigned to them with parts provided by the much over-tasked chief of maintenance for the County of Hawaii Fire Department. He has limited space and personnel, and cannot stretch to maintain volunteer fire department vehicles under the umbrella of the County Fire Department. A quick trip to the Hilo maintenance facility will confirm that the best option for volunteer vehicle maintenance is to do the work "in house", with parts obtained (with chain-of-command approval) from the County of Hawaii Fire Department vehicle maintenance shop. Further financial assistance in the form of providing vehicles or replacing older vehicles is also a major concern. Two stations, Milolii and Puuanahulu have no fire engine whatsoever (merely small brush trucks) while the following stations have vehicles in extremely bad condition due to age (most late sixties with Naalehu having an early 1970's): Gomm. No. S2~•s Ref. To: ~es~~?~d C~~ Ref. Uote ~'IAK_