LIHU’E — The Kaua’i Fire Department has budgeted $45,000 this year to cover the cost of search and rescue missions and firefighting operations using helicopters. Whether the funds are sufficient won’t be known until the end of the fiscal year
LIHU’E — The Kaua’i Fire Department has budgeted $45,000 this year to cover
the cost of search and rescue missions and firefighting operations using
helicopters.
Whether the funds are sufficient won’t be known until the end
of the fiscal year because “we don’t know how the year will play out in terms
of rescues and fires,” fire chief David Sproat said.
Kaua’i County
contracts the services of Air-1 Inter-Island Helicopters, a Hanapepe company,
on a case-by-case basis, according to county finance director Wallace Rezentes
Jr.
Helicopters pick up water from reservoirs or from the ocean and dump
it on brush fires, augmenting the efforts of firefighters on the
ground.
Three helicopters – two from Air-1 and a helicopter from the Navy’s
Pacific Missile Range Facility – played key roles in fighting a brush fire last
Sunday that blackened 100 acres near the Kaumuaali’i Highway about one mile
west of Halfway Bridge.
Had the helicopters not been in operation, the fire
could have forced the closure of the highway or caused the disruption of
telephone and electricity service by burning down utility poles on the highway,
officials said.
To reduce the use of civilian and military helicopters to
fight brush fires during the drought season, owners of large, vacant lots
should cut down high grass, Sproat said.
The property owners should also
maintain road access to their lots and within the lots where fires may erupt,
Sproat said.
“Landowners need to be on top of the management of these
lands,” Sproat said.
To help combat future brush fires, the fire department
will use a $55,000 grant from the state Department of Land and Natural
Resources Division of Forestry and Wildlife to buy a four-wheel-drive brush
vehicle equipped with a mini pumper, a water tank and other
equipment.
Three brush fires occurred in Lihu’e, Puhi and Kipu over the
past week.
In the latest one, firefighters on Thursday put out residual
“hot spots” from a Tuesday fire that charred seven acres of grass in a valley
south of Kaumuali’i Highway and Puhi Bypass Road, said acting battalion chief
Myles Moriguchi.
Staff writer Lester Chang can be reached at 245-3681
(ext. 225) and lchang@pulitzer.net
