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VII . FIRE DEPARTMENT OPERATIONS By Chief Thomas Bello (Verbatim) BELLO: First of all, as you 're aware, I 'm very new at this position. (Inaudible) role about what the fire chief ' s role is , being that I 'm directly from fire (inaudible) and have a lot of experience in that field, 22 years . Anyway, the role in the Fire Department [see Attach- ment B] . . .Hawaii County Fire Department is a fully paid, professional fire protection agency, supplemented by volunteer units in the rural areas . It has the responsi- bility of protecting life and property from fires and multi-farious injuries , I mean emergencies , and to require emergency medical services to a population in excess of 115 ,000. This population is spread out over 4,038 square miles of mountains , plateaus , tropical rain forests and agric- ultural lands and desert areas . Providing adequate fire protection emergency medical services for these vast areas presentsmany problems , especially in the area of response times. Okay. Emergency situations routinely managed includes fire protec. . . fire suppression, since those fires (inaudible) destructive fires , vehicular fires , brush and crop fires and etcetera. Now emergency medical services covers the pre-hospital type of cares for traumatic and natural illnesses . We also do land and sea rescues. We search for missing hunters , overdue hikers and fishermen, etcetera. We do a lot of vehicular and other type of extrication involving victims trapped in vehicles and buildings . We 're primarily trying to formulate, excuse me, a hazardous response team.. This is to comply with E P A s mandate. . . (inaudible) has these materials . Okay. The duties of the Fire Department is to provide fire safety mitigation activities through education or fire safety code enforcement; provide an adequate response to any emergency with proper equipment and trained personnel in a. . . in a timely manner , that minimizes personal injury or property loss or loss of life. Excuse me. And to accomplish all this missions with relentless and profes- sional and fiscal responsibilities . Some of the major goals which were of the past.... . . administration' s and which will be mine, were to provide in depth coverage of all Big Island for the response to fire emergency. . .emergencies , . rescue emergencies ; to have continue programs of upgrading for the additional fire stations and facilities ; continued programs of upgrading 181