MIN CHARTER 2018-08-10 (2018-2020)

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -2 August 10, 2018 CHIEF ROSARIO: Correct. Now for us it's within the first year. So every three months we'll rotate the new Firefighter recruits to different stations. The reason is that you get a different view of incident -type calls. So if you're in the Ka`u District, you're going to get a lot of wildfire -type calls, EMS calls with long transports or different types of treatment modalities. if you're down in the South Kohala area, now you're dealing with high rise type firefighting; we've also got our aeromedical helicopter there, and you have a lot of wildland fires mixed in with native areas, burial sites. All have to take into account. You can't just—you have to know the area so you're not bulldozing an area that is protected. But we rotate them all around. Also, it gives them a chance to work under a different type of Captain and also a different type of station. There's rescue stations, hazmat stations, just fire stations, and then Fire/EMS stations as well. MS. TODD: So you would say that someone who's going to be the Chief really needs to know the different types of operations? CHIEF ROSARIO: I'm a firm believer that anyone with hard work and a good mindset can learn anything that they need to learn, but what that will give is the experience. You can have all the education and be able to work through that, but until you go out and do the actual calls, experience is really, really one of the hardest things to gain. You can't get that from the book or anything, so forth. But actually being out there and experiencing the changes that occurred during incidents, really helps you to be successful. It also helps you to come before on this table and plead for the things that we need to operate the department. MS. TODD: Thank you very much. And I know you're probably underfunded in terms of the types of equipment that you need. CHIEF ROSARIO: We work really hard for that. I know the Finance Director can share with you how hard we work towards that. But it's a team concept. If they're giving us money, they're grabbing us money from someone else. You know, we're here to work hard, so what we try to do is offset that by being very aggressive with grants, and I want to say that the personnel in our department that has worked on grants have been very, very successful. They've brought in millions and millions of dollars to the department which helps the County as a whole not having to fund some of the things that we normally would—a good example is our self-contained breathing apparatus which is what we're mandated to wear when we go into a IDLH, (hnmediate Danger to Life or Health) or an immediate death situation such as a fire or a hazmat. We had to change that all out. That was a $2 million change out, and we got a federal grant for that and I think our cost share from the County was only about $120,000 for about a $2 million purchase. So my hats off to the men and women that worked hard on that, and that's the kind of things that we're doing to try to offset some of the budgetary shortfalls that we have as a County -wide partnership. Page 29