2022-12-07 Fire Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Fire Commission Regular Session Minutes December 7, 2022 Page 2 view eventually. On November 27, 2022, Mauna Loa started to erupt and was contained within the caldera. A lava lake formed at the summit and spilled over to the north and southwest portions of the summit. This initial spillage alarmed the community of a potential flow, but this rapidly gave way to a northeast rift zone eruption. At first light, HFD got the chopper up, got video footage, and streamed it on their Facebook site. Chair Kosaki wanted to know if there were any problems in the Ocean View area with excessive ash or a lot of smoke when Mauna Loa first started erupting. Chief Todd stated no, he was working for the first ten hours, 40 minutes after the lava started erupting, he was at the EOC and it wasn't an issue. There have been reports of people who had respiratory irritation from SO2. Chair Kosaki asked if there's been a lot of vog and asked if they have been measuring it. Chief Todd stated yes, there has been vog. Chair Kosaki asked if the Department of Health or Fire Department is monitoring SO2 levels. Chief Todd stated they aren't monitoring in the sense of releasing any numbers or figures at this time, primarily because it's not a residential area. They distributed four of their old units to the Police Department. HFD is in the process of looking to procure more SO2 monitors and about 200 sets of P100 acid gas cartridges. Chief Todd noted that they are trying to get all the video footage taken from the chopper onto their Facebook site as a public service, to share the latest pictures of what's going on. • Budget Report: Chief Todd stated his goal is to being more stats and analytic data, that's useful to see how the department is being run. He referred to a new budget data graph, which shows statistics for the percentage of the year completed, expended FYTD, and projected EOFY. Chair Kosaki asked why the EMS equipment expense is so high. Chief Todd stated that it's all been basically spent and explained their biggest equipment expense is ambulances and it's already been secured, they bought five ambulances. They won't be purchasing any more ambulances for the year, if anything it would be once a year. Commissioner Wolf wanted to know the difference between two line items on the graph; equipment, and operations equipment. Chief Todd explained that OCE is operating capital expenditures and equipment is basically equipment. S&W is salaries and wages. OCE refers to electricity, water, trash pickup, uniforms, smaller pieces of equipment, and refrigerators at the station. Equipment would be large purchases, such as an ambulance, fire truck, etc.