By Erin Miller
Stephens Media
Hawaii County’s Fire Department will soon be getting at least five new trucks, free of charge.
The department will get five from the City and County of Honolulu Fire Department, Hawaii County Deputy Fire Chief Glenn Honda said.
Chief Darren Rosario mentioned the acquisition during a Wednesday County Council finance committee hearing about the department’s upcoming budget.
“Yes, it would be great to get all new apparatus, but this will hold us until the economic situation improves,” Rosario said.
When council members asked where the equipment would be used, he said it was too early to know yet.
The trucks are Class A pumper trucks and 2,500-gallon tankers, Rosario said.
Honda said the county is also in line to accept three to five brush trucks, decommissioned by federal firefighting units and distributed to Hawaii counties by the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife.
None of the Honolulu trucks are new, Honda said.
“We’ll be able to use them as backup,” he said. “They have a large fleet. When they cycle out vehicles, they have the option to send them to auction or give them to the neighbor islands.”
Honolulu uses the trucks until the value depreciates to about $5,000 per vehicle, Honda said. At that point, they decommission and donate the vehicles. A Hawaii County mechanic inspected the trucks.
The Hawaii County Council must still approve a resolution, which Honda said will be submitted soon, before the department can accept the vehicles.
“We’re always in need of vehicles,” Honda said. “We’ll spread them out throughout the island.”
The trucks will be “strategically” placed, to provide the most backup coverage, he said.
City and County of Honolulu Fire Department Capt. Carlton Yamada said the trucks are all from 1988 and 1989. The department follows a replacement procedure that first offers soon-to-be-replaced vehicles to other city agencies, then to state agencies and Hawaii, Maui and Kauai counties. If none of those agencies express interest in taking the vehicles, nonprofit groups may ask for the trucks. If no groups take the vehicles, then the vehicles are auctioned off, Yamada said. The final option, if the vehicles don’t sell at auction, is for the vehicles to be scrapped.
He said the vehicles are helpful for departments like Hawaii Island.
“Their area is large,” he said. “They may not have as many people living as condensed an area as downtown, (but) if they were to have a brush fire, they could have something that lasts for weeks.”
The backup vehicles can help in those situations, he said. Such backup vehicles are also helpful because the grant application process to replace fire vehicles is lengthy, so having extra vehicles on standby helps departments when vehicles scheduled to be replaced break down.
