Honolulu’s fire chief says immediate changes were made in the wake of recent accidents — one of them deadly, the other serious.
It’s the first time Chief Manuel Neves has directly answered questions about safety since Wednesday, when we revealed witness video that shows a firefighter falling out of a helicopter rescue basket that got snagged on a utility line.
HFD said the firefighter was in stable condition after the fall, but his injuries put him in the hospital, requiring surgery and ongoing therapy. A pending federal investigation calls the injuries “serious.”
The department says medical privacy laws limit how much it can tell the public about the severity of last month’s helicopter accident. Neves says HFD did not intentionally try to downplay how bad it was.
“When we asked the condition of our firefighter, they (medical personnel) said stable and alert,” Neves said. “It wasn’t an attempt on our part to try to confuse anybody or misstate or play down the seriousness of that incident.”