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HomeMy WebLinkAboutLEPC Meeting Minutes 112024 DRAFTLocal Emergency Planning Committee November 20, 2024 Page 1 Hawaii County LEPC Meeting Minutes Civil Defense EOC and via ZOOM November 20, 2024 Members Present: Gerald/Kosaki/LEPC Chair, Matthew Ho/HFD HAZMAT, Talmadge Magno/Civil Defense, Jeremy Evangelista/HPD, Chris Leonard/Media, Members Present via Zoom: Eric Honda/DOH Non-Members Present: Jordyn Mantz/Fire Admin., Bill Hansen/Civil Defense Non-Members Present via Zoom: Mark Gordon/JM Decker Group, Andy Kendrick/PHMSA Hawai’i Pipeline Safety Association, Cyanne Becker/DOH PHP Members Absent: Darwin Okinaka/HFD, Kilipaki Kanae/HFD EMS, Terri Napeahi/Keaukaha Action Network, Makalani Pina/Dept. of Agriculture, Dave Cummings/Hamakua Energy Ha Chi/HBMC, Thomas Gilmore/DOH HEER, Phil Carper/BEI Hawaii, Casey Kishimori/HECO, Alfred Leung/Pacific Biodiesel, Jordan Hara/PGV, Orasa Fernandez/DOE I. CALL TO ORDER: 09:09AM Called to order. II. STATEMENTS FROM PUBLIC: None III. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Not enough attendees for Quorum, unable to approve previous LEPC Meeting Minutes. Can approve the minutes at the next meeting. IV. COUNTY REPORTS: a. CIVIL DEFENSE Bill Hansen: Old business, continuing to work on the multi- hazard mitigation plan. Yesterday had an internal meeting and tonight having public meeting late afternoon on Kona side for Multi-Hazard Mitigation plan. Working on a General plan. Working with HPD on evidence storage project. Community Resilience Grant awarded, working with DOH Vibrant Hawai’i and other entities on program to help with rural medical communications capability. Continuing to work on tsunami evacuation plan. Friday, 11/22/24 10:15-11:00am executing evacuation exercise in conjunction with the schools in Keaukaha. Open Nene Street gate for anyone who wants to evacuate that route. i. Kosaki to Hansen: Are they going to go through the airport? ii. Hansen: No, decided we would like to open the Nene Street gate to allow those who would like to traverse that back area. b. Talmadge Magno: Red Flag Warning happened, more opportunity to exercise that level of response with the new onset of Public Safety Power Shut-off (PSPS). No fires for Hawai’i County reported. Marginal Red Flag, never saw humidity drop too low and windspeeds never ramped up for Hawai’i. Maui and Kaua’i had some wildfires. Local Emergency Planning Committee November 20, 2024 Page 2 c. HFD Darwin Okinaka: Not Present. d. HFD HAZMAT Matthew Ho: Incident at West Hawai’i at the transfer station couple of months back. Someone dumped something into the trash chute. Gasses mixed within the dump container. Attendee for transported to the hospital due to the gas emitted. Had to send to DOH cause the equipment couldn’t identify the mixture. Turns out it was nitric acid. Only injury was the attendant. No significant Incidents on East Hawai’i. Hazmat is finishing up getting re- certified/refreshers for confined space training. Should be finishing up beginning of next year. i. Kosaki to Ho: Are you guys doing recertification online? ii. Ho: No, Recertification is in-person and is 8 hours including breaking the plane into a confined space, Egress, etc. Done yearly to keep certified. iii. Kosaki: Who holds the training? iv. Ho: IAFF has been coming down and doing the certification. Some kind of grant fund supports this. IAFF came down this year and will next year. Refresher part is on HFD. We have lead guys who set it up and find locations for confined space. Always looking for more if anyone is interested to offer training. v. Kosaki: Are you guys going to do the full-tech hazmat training next year? vi. Ho: Yes vii. Kosaki: We could use the Hazardous Materials Emergency Planning Grant for training for the next 3 years. Honolulu has it every year and we’re rotating between Maui with classes. e. HFD EMS Kilipaki Kanae: Not Present. f. HPD Jeremie Evangelista: Continuing to refine the tsunami plan. Once we get the county plan, work on labeling maps. Once done, will push out tsunami plan to include updated maps. Finished all hazard training. Training through our document management system. Did some of the basic stuff such as Incident Command System, National Incident Management, etc. Like Talmadge mentioned, had the red flag warning. Attended the weather planning meetings. Didn’t have any reporting incidents, did not have to activate Incident Command. Reports of smoke but was actually dust kicking up from the high winds. Participating in the tsunami exercise on Friday. i. Kosaki to Evangelista: Who participates? ii. Evangelista: DOT, HPD jumping in on this to allow public to participate and practice as well. iii. Magno: Previous years, would attend committee meetings and announce to public they can join this practice evacuation iv. Evangelista: Receiving lots of support from DPW for roadblocks, etc. v. Kosaki: Is there practices in West Hawai’i? vi. Evangelista: There was an evacuation done a couple years ago. Don’t remember doing one recently. Waikoloa does a fire evacuation every Local Emergency Planning Committee November 20, 2024 Page 3 couple of years. Ho’ulu street evacuation and invites the public to practice. vii. Magno: Road is similar to Nene Street, only there for evacuation. Located on Ulu Street, comes out just north of South Kohala Fire Station. V. INDUSTRY PARTNERS: a. BEI Hawai’i Neil O’Heron: Not Present. b. PGV Jordan Hara: Not Present. c. HAMAKUA ENERGY PARTNERS Dave Cummings: Not Present. d. PACIFIC BIODIESEL Alfred Leung: Not Present. e. HECO Casey Kishimori: Not Present f. MEDIA Chris Leonard: Thank you to Civil Defense for being on top outages and issues here during the potential PSPS situation. For Red Flag Warning last week, doing really well on practicing on responding to situations similar to Lahaina fires. g. PHMSA: Andy Kendrick: Unable to report, Called into DOT audit. h. Andy Kendrick: Left in chat “HPSA would like to get a few minutes in the future LEPC meeting to discuss pipeline emergency response required by the DOT.” i. Environmental Health Mark Gordon: Nothing to Report VI. STATE REPORTS: a. DOH HEER/HSERC Sharon Leonida: Meeting at Homer A. Maxey, across from restaurant and federal building. They have a foreign trade zone. Meeting there because that particular week I will be sending notices that EPA is coming down to do workshops. You can sign up online for ORRT Training. Includes lithium-ion batteries, tour of harbor, look at various places for problems in harbor. Will have LEPC budget for this training. b. DOH Eric Honda: Nothing to Report. c. DOH PHP Cyanne Becker: Public Health Preparedness (PHP). Press Release for the H5N1 could please distribute to members. Preparing to do Hawai’i Island Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response. Not Island-wide and only allowed 210 responders. Have to take it in chunks. Scheduling and planning now. Today will be some type of orientation. Hoping to take off between April and May. Also doing COOP and Emergency Operations Plan. i. Kosaki to Becker: Since you mentioned Aven Flu is H5N1, regarding it, is it transmitted through droplets, feces, bird feathers, to other birds and highly contagious? Does it affect humans and how serious is it? ii. Becker: We’re monitoring it currently because it was found in wastewater in Oahu. DOH is doing surveillance. There have been cases in the mainland where it jumped from birds to cows. People who drink raw milk can transfer it to humans. We are asking the public to be vigilant and report anything. Do not drink Raw milk! Only pasteurized. iii. Kosaki: What would be human symptoms? Local Emergency Planning Committee November 20, 2024 Page 4 iv. Becker: Flu-like symptoms, fever, cough, runny nose. Can take anti-viral to minimize effects. Will notice lots of animal carcasses around if H5N1 is spreading. Do not touch dead animals. v. Kosaki: Any deaths? vi. Becker: No deaths on Big Island. Some cases on Oahu. There are concerns for Hawai’i due to having Cow farms. vii. Talmadge to Becker: Can people get infected through cow beef? viii. Becker: Yes, important to please report. If dealing with carcasses, please wear PPE. ix. Cyanne Becker: Left in chat “Reporting multiple or unusual illnesses or deaths in poultry, livestock, wild birds, or animals: Monday-Friday 07:45- 04:30pm call 808-837-8092.” d. HBMC Ha Chi: Not Present e. Dept. of Ag Makalani Pina: Not present VII. OLD BUSINESS: a. Military Representative on LEPC: Gerald Kosaki Fire Chief Mike Diehl from Pohakuloa Training Area will be representative. Information from Chief Okinaka, added to the list. With the Mayor being updates, we will send an updated list of members to the new mayor. i. VIII. NEW BUSINESS: a. HAZMAT Continuing Challenge: Gerald Kosaki Thank you to those who submitted reports to LEPC. Received reports that were also sent to the Fire Chief and Mayor’s Office. Great workshop. A lot of the vendors that were there that gave exposure to a lot of new equipment training. DECON, waterless DECON, different types of new systems and equipment. Especially in identifying chemicals. Making it much safer as the years go on. Can even identify chemicals without even touching them. Container can be opaque or color and can still identify it. One thing that’s really good additional to the classes is talking to vendors and representatives for inside view of what the product is. Training great and they offer different types. Tabletop and full-scale exercise training. b. Matt Ho: Usually every year, biggest thing with 3rd year going is the experience gained. People teaching on ammonia, fuel-truck fires, mainland people take lots of videos showing responding in real-time responses. Teachers willing to tell you when something was done wrong during the footage which helps because I didn’t realize while watching that something was done wrong until they pointed it out. Love to hand out their contact information and open to contact any time for assistance, sitting with folks from San Diego, LA County, pick their brains on their Hazmat Response. Always a spectrum on how they approach Hazmat. Lots of good Networking with people and vendors at the conference c. Gerald: Speaking of the money. LEPC sponsored 5 people to attend. Because the reservations were made late and due to approving early but Hawai’i County Local Emergency Planning Committee November 20, 2024 Page 5 processing, registration for plane and rooms were made in late August. Because of that, we didn’t make registration fees, paid extra $50 for registration. Plane reservations went up to $700. Over $1500 more per person for 5 people. LEPC is supporting and paying for that, but I spoke with the Fire Chief and will try to be more fiscally prudent. More efficient with money so we have more money to do other things. Chief said he will look into changing the process and approvals so then they improve reservation process. Work on better process to save money as LEPC and the County. IX. ANNOUNCEMENTS a. Bill Hanson: Dec.9-13 will be holding ICS-300 and ICS-400 Training Course held at Haihai Fire Station. 2 slots for LEPC open if anyone interested. Fire and Police already attending. b. Talmadge Magno: Public announcement going out. Tomorrow night 11/21/24 at 11:59pm Hawaiian Telcom will be having an outage. Moving fiber-optic wires from Pu’uanahulu to another set of poles. X. NEXT MEETING: February 13, 2024, 9:00AM at EOC. Request responses for attendance to make sure we are meeting quorum for each meeting. XI. ADJOURNMENT: Meeting Adjourned at 09:53AM.