The only Coast Guard cutter stationed on Hawaii Island will be leaving Hilo Saturday for its new home port on Guam.
The only Coast Guard cutter stationed on Hawaii Island will be leaving Hilo Saturday for its new home port on Guam.
The departure of the USCGC Kiska — which was stationed in Hilo for 27 years — and its crew of two officers and 14 enlisted personnel leaves the Big Island with only two shore-based Coast Guard personnel. Their duties encompass inspections and investigations, not the open-ocean search and water rescues which Big Islanders have come to depend on from the Coast Guard.
Mayor Harry Kim said he spoke with the Coast Guard Friday morning and was reassured there is a contingency plan to cover search-and-rescue missions that are beyond the capabilities of the Hawaii Fire Department.
“I have only one concern. I want to make sure they know our dependence on them for anything on water,” Kim said. “… I need assurances that in their contingency plan, they’ll be able to respond in a timely manner when we’re in need of help. I have the confidence that they will dispatch (search units). The only difference is in timeliness to get here.”
The Fire Department’s search-and-rescue crews will still cover near-shore operations, the mayor said, but the island will still need assistance with open-ocean missions.
“Our resources are not made for any more than a mile (offshore), especially in a sustained search,” he said.
Kim, who was county Civil Defense administrator for 24 years before first becoming mayor in 2000, said the Coast Guard had informed his current Civil Defense chief, Talmadge Magno, of their plans before Kim was made aware of them on Thursday.
Magno said he’s known about the guard’s plans for a couple of months.
“The Fire Department fills a void. That’ll be covered,” Magno said. “The longer-range fishermen, boats that are farther out than the capacity of the Fire Department, that might get affected. But the Coast Guard’s got their aircraft. They’ll launch those, as well. I don’t have all the data on the effectiveness of the Kiska when it was here in Hilo, but they’re trying to make sure they still got the coverage with the extended patrols of the new-type ships that they have out of Honolulu.”
Petty Officer 3rd Class Amanda Levasseur, a Coast Guard spokeswoman stationed in Honolulu, said there will eventually be three new 154-foot fast-response cutters, each costing $65 million, within two to three years. They will replace the older 110-foot island-class cutters, including the Kiska. All will be home ported at Sand Island in Honolulu.
The first, the fast-response cutter Oliver Berry, is expected to arrive this month. The Joseph Gerczak will arrive sometime in fiscal year 2018, with the third cutter, yet to be named, arriving in 2019.
Levasseur said the reason none will be stationed in Hilo “all comes down to logistics.”
“(The new cutters) wouldn’t fit in the slip where the Kiska currently sits,” she noted.
The Kiska was commissioned in 1990 and has spent its entire operational career home ported in Hilo.
“I’ve had more than one time when the Kiska was inoperable or was sent on missions elsewhere and (the Coast Guard) had to have a contingency plan as to how to respond to us,” Kim said. “… There were times when they had to activate their contingency plan, and I can’t think of any time when I was not OK with the response.”
Levasseur said the new class of cutter represents an operational upgrade over the Kiska and its ilk.
“It’s definitely more advanced, has better communications capabilities. It’s physically larger, so that allows for a longer offshore response and can withstand heavier seas,” she said.
The response time from Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point on Oahu to Hawaii Island is about 45 minutes for Coast Guard’s four HC-130 aircraft and 90 minutes for their three MH-65 Dolphin helicopters.
“Typically, our air assets from Barbers Point are the first to respond, anyway. But (cutters) will not be leaving from Honolulu. I think that’s the misconception people have,” Levasseur said. “… We constantly have boats patrolling around the Hawaiian Islands and our area of responsibility in the Pacific. It’s all circumstantial, case by case. And whatever boat is out there at the time, if there is a search-and-rescue case, that will be the one diverted.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.