Episode 14: Honolulu’s Emergency Services

On this episode of the One O’ahu Podcast, Honolulu Emergency Services Department (HESD) Director, Dr. James Ireland, joins host Brandi Higa, to discuss reorganizing the department to make Ocean Safety its own department, plus the added resources on the way to support our City EMS and Ocean Safety workers. And after sitting idle for years, the new plan for the Iwilei Resource Center.

Listen Now:

Reorganizing the Department

The Honolulu Ocean Safety and Lifeguard division and EMS both fall under HESD. In his State of the City Address, Mayor Rick Blangiardi announced the creation of a task force to study whether the people of the City and County of Honolulu and visitors to O’ahu would be better and more efficiently serviced by having separate departments for EMS and Ocean Safety.

“There’s some thought that maybe their own department, with ocean safety experts leading the department, they could perhaps provide even a better service to the public than they are now,” said Director Ireland.

Upgrades for Emergency Medical Services

Dr. Ireland goes on in this episode to explain the need to get more ambulances on the road on O’ahu, revealing that their call volume is 20% higher than pre-pandemic levels.

“The Mayor, and my boss Mike Formby the Managing Director, were very supportive,” added Ireland. “They funded two additional ambulances in the upcoming budget. So we’re planning on putting an ambulance somewhere in town, probably Kaka’ako or Mānoa and we’re also planning to put an ambulance in Kalihi.”

Director Ireland goes on to discuss plans to redeploy some of the existing ambulances in the City fleet.

Upgrades for Ocean Safety

Also in his State of the City Address, Mayor Rick Blangiardi stated that our ocean safety officers need better facilities. On this episode of the One Oahu Podcast, Dr. Ireland explained how joint EMS and Ocean Safety District Headquarters are in the works.

“We're looking at a joint EMS and Ocean Safety district headquarters where we'd have an ambulance, the rescue skis, and the ocean safety captain and lieutenants somewhere again around Sunset Beach,” explained Ireland. “And we're also looking for a similar type of arrangement in the Kaka’ako area.”

Iwilei Resource Center

The City’s Crisis Outreach Response and Engagement  (C.O.R.E.) program began in December 2021. This program also falls under HESD and provide services to O’ahu’s unsheltered population. Bed space quickly became an issue for those the CORE program was trying to help but the opening of the Iwilei Resource Center this month may provide a solution.

“We're opening up about a 25 bed medical respite in Iwilei,, the Iwilei Resource Center this month,” added Ireland. “CORE is going to run it long term. We may transfer that to a nonprofit or even to the State, but we have an immediate need for folks to get off the streets that are fragile medically. Now, once they're in this unit, we're going to triage them and our plan is to have them out of the medical respite within one to two months.”

The CORE program consists of operation managers, field supervisors, community health workers and emergency medical technicians.