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House Meets on Matters of Vog
23 September 2008
(KHON NEWS)
The House's special Vog committee held its final meeting today, but problems caused by the nasty haze are far from over.
Lawmakers heard from more than a dozen agencies looking into the problems brought on by vog. Ka'u hospital in Pahala, an area heavily affected by volcanic haze doesn't even have air conditioning  Ka'u hospital administrator, Merilyn Harris says, "It's very difficult to provide emergency care or to provide care to someone when they have difficulty breathing in an area where the air quality is not good." It would cost the hospital 4.7 million dollars for proper air filtration. Until funds come, they have a temporary solution. "We created a safe room,which is a large room we were able to air condition where our long term care residents can go." Every school in the area has established safe rooms and fire officials are urging residents to have one of their own. Chief Darryl Oliveira of the Hawaii Fire Department says, "Be prepared for an annoucement to come out and advisory, basically saying to stay in doors, minimize your outdoor activity, basically a shelter in place in your own residence." Right now fire fighters patrol high SO 2 areas and warn residents. Civil defense has a plan to warn the people more effectively. "What they are looking at is a computer based system that would work to do a mass calling or a mass dialing of phone numbers and actually pass on the information or communication from civil defense." Then there's the problem with agriculture..SO 2 eats away at farmer's infrastructure and ash kills crops causing millions of dollars in damage. Several solutions were brought to the table. Duane Okamoto from the Department of Agriculture says, "As the ash and the gas settles on the plant their stock of the water could be used to wash off the ash which would help mitigate the damage." The committee plans to review all the findings Source: KHON NEWS Author: By Brianne Randle |
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