The county is having difficulty staffing lifeguard towers at Big Island beaches.

The county is having difficulty staffing lifeguard towers at Big Island beaches.

Bradley Young, Hawaii Fire Department battalion chief in charge of the Ocean Safety Division, told the Fire Commission during its Aug. 27 meeting at the County Council Chambers in Kona that two barriers to filling openings for water safety officers are applicants passing the required physical agility exam and the lag in time between application and hiring. That delay, he said, sometimes results in candidates finding another job they find satisfactory.

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According to the county’s job posting, a full-time water safety officer’s starting pay is $52,128 yearly.

Fire Commission Chairman Gerald Kosaki, a retired HFD battalion chief, posed the bulk of the questions directed at Young and Temporary Fire Chief Daniel Volpe. Kosaki described beach lifeguards as “true ambassadors for the county of Hawaii because they are right there, dealing with the public directly.”

“Ocean Safety is very important because they’re the first line of defense at the beach,” Kosaki noted. “If somebody’s caught in a rip tide or drowning, if we call 911 or the fire department, it takes time for them to get there. And by the time they get there (the beachgoer) might be under.”

Young told commissioners the county has 72 water safety officers to cover 17 lifeguard towers at 13 beach parks and there are currently nine vacant positions.

The beach parks with towers are: Onekahakaha, Carlsmith, Leleiwi, Richardson and Honolii in Hilo; Isaac Hale at Pohoiki in Puna; Punaluu Black Sand in Ka‘u; Kua Bay, Laaloa and Kahaluu in Kailua-Kona; and Hapuna and Spencer in South Kohala.

Kahaluu has two towers and Hapuna — a white-sand beach that made the vaunted Dr. Beach Top 10 list of beaches worldwide in 2021 — has three.

“The north tower at Hapuna, I heard, was only staffed a couple of times in the last six months or a year or something,” Kosaki said.

“Hapuna north tower was one of the lowest staffed out of the year, alongside with Spencer’s for West Hawaii, as well as Onekahakaha and Carlsmith in East Hawaii,” Young replied. He added Ocean Safety uses data from the Watchtower app and, if a tower doesn’t have reports of beachgoers needing assistance for a period of time, the personnel for that tower will fill in a nearby tower where more assistance is needed. That includes moving lifeguards from Hapuna to Spencer or Kua Bay.

“Those are good tools but we want to try to get staffing available so we can staff those towers,” Kosaki replied.

Young told commissioners he’s taking an aggressive approach to recruiting.

“We have three recruitments scheduled through the end of this year,” he said. “We completed one with four candidates that we’re looking to hire. That’ll drop our vacancies to five. Our next agility (test) is scheduled for Sep. 23. And two months after that, we’ll have our final (recruitment) for the year in the month of November. And the goal is to fill all vacancies.

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“The last tentative date of new hires is Jan. 1.”

Young said a couple of moves Ocean Safety has made is to offer a second chance to pass the agility test, something police have done with recruits, and to offer applicants additional training with pool lifeguards. He noted that after the last round of agility tests, those who passed were interviewed a week later.

“Can we do it sooner, I mean, like that day or the next day?” Kosaki inquired. He added that if it could be done, applicants who’ve had to take a day off their current jobs for the agility test won’t have to ask for another day of absence from work.

“Maybe that can be a possibility,” Young replied.

Volpe jumped in and told Kosaki the wait time between steps in the job application process is “not unique to the fire department” and “is actually experienced countywide.”

“Human Resources has been putting a focus on the language in our postings as we open up recruitments of all sorts — firefighters, temporary positions and everything,” Volpe said. “These workforce issues are kind of taking people away who are looking for work. We recognize that we need to move faster, as fast as possible.

“Even in our recruitment process, from the day that they take their physical to the day they’re hired is about nine months, on average. And that is sort of the process. So trying to shave off pieces of that. We’re hoping that for the candidates, this is the dream job, that they’re going to be firefighters and they’re going to wait. I know that I quit my job when the opportunity to become a firefighter came up.

“But it’s not unique to fire, it’s not unique to Ocean Safety. It’s countywide. And so we’ve changed some of our language along the way to address some of those issues.”

There was no vote taken on the agenda item, and Kosaki told Young and Volpe he’s “not trying to badger.”

“I’m just trying to see how we can fill these vacancies so we can staff the towers,” he said.

The Fire Commission has scheduled a pair of special meetings for the hiring of a new fire chief to succeed Kazuo Todd, who collapsed unexpectedly and died at age 45 Dec. 14 last year. Those meetings are Sep. 24 and 25, 9 a.m. both days, at the County Council Chambers in Hilo.”

Human Resources Director Sommer Tokihiro told the commission in May the county received 33 applications and found 13 of the applicants met the county’s minimum qualifications to be the next chief. Candidate names haven’t yet been made public.

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Email John Burnett at [email protected].