Work to improve the 91-year-old Central Fire Station building on the corner of Kinoole and Ponahawai streets in Hilo should begin soon, according to Hawaii Fire Department Chief Kazuo Todd.
“We signed a lot of recent paperwork to get stuff moving,” Todd told the Tribune-Herald on Monday. “I’m hopeful we’ll see some significant progress … in the next few months.”
Meanwhile, renovations to a midtown Hilo warehouse on Kilauea Avenue that will become the temporary Central Fire Station continue to progress.
The move to the 1382 Kilauea Ave. location, which originally was slated to have taken place during summer 2023, remains on hold because of building code concerns about the department’s temporary digs-to-be. Those included fire protection measures required by the code for buildings housing workers 24/7.
The Central Fire Station building has age-related issues, both structural and cosmetic — including cracks in its facade, unsightly mold, a leaking and crumbling roof, outdated plumbing and electrical wiring, and other age- and maintenance-related issues.
County firefighters and paramedics continue to work in the dilapidated structure, and firetrucks and ambulances continue to be parked in its garage bays when not dispatched to a call.
“The original work there was to be an entire rehaul of the building that was quoted at, like, $8 million, but I know the scope of the work has been significantly scaled back,” Todd said. “Part of the reason was that the original scope of work was with the idea that we were going to stay in Central for the next hundred years. And my biggest issue with that, when I became the chief, was that the building is still within the tsunami inundation area.
“And I didn’t really want this whole gut-and-rebuild for a facility that, at any given time, a big wave could come, we would be out of a facility and we’d have to rebuild somewhere else.”
Todd said there are two potential sites — both at elevation and not at risk of tsunami inundation — where a new Central Fire Station eventually could be built.
One is on four acres of land on Mohouli Street mauka of the $33 million dispatch center for police, fire and emergency medical services that should soon be completed. The other, he said, is on Ponahawai Street uphill of the current Central Fire location.
“We’re in the process of a congressional directed-spending request through Sen. (Brian) Schatz’s office to get funding for the design of a new Central Fire Station,” Todd said.
Fire dispatchers, who were moved out of a potentially dangerous situation at the Central Fire Station and are sharing space at the Hawaii Police Department’s 349 Kapiolani Ave. call center, won’t be moving back into the aging downtown Hilo building once renovations are completed.
“We’ll have the new dispatch center opening soon, and we’ll be able to move our dispatch personnel into there. I’m very much looking forward to that,” Todd said.
