In Case of Emergency

Our growing visitor population adds yet another challenge for firefighters, because our landscape, besides being beautiful, can also be deadly. Exploring beyond the beaten path when you don’t know the terrain and weather patterns is a recipe for trouble. Last year alone, the department responded to nearly 11,000 calls.

“When I was on rescue, we’d get calls from visitors in distress and it was like, ‘They’re where? How did they get in the middle of nowhere?’” says Pokini. “We’d go down and grab them, and on our way out I’d ask them how they knew about this place; they’d almost always say they read about it in the Maui Revealed guidebook.”

He adds, “People nowadays can just look up anywhere they want to go — pull it up on a map and say, ‘I’m going to go here today’ — and put themselves in places where they probably shouldn’t be.”

Add to all that the fact that we’re on the most isolated island chain on Earth, and you can see why our firefighters have to excel at far more skills, in a variety of threatening situations, than most other firefighters do.

“Many departments on the mainland have agreements with neighboring departments to step in if a certain specialty is needed,” explains MCFD Training Bureau Captain Rylan Yatsushiro. “Our next resource is a plane or a boat ride away.”

To understand how everyday citizens become lifesavers, I tagged along with firefighters in training. I realized right away that, while it’s all for practice, the danger is very real.

In addition to the more exotic rescues, trainees and veterans alike must keep up with the latest in fighting fires. Modern construction and synthetic fillings in furniture burn much faster than old-fashioned, natural fillings like feathers and cotton, changing the game for rescuers.