{"id":201333,"date":"2015-05-12T04:00:05","date_gmt":"2015-05-11T18:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=201333"},"modified":"2015-05-12T04:00:05","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T18:00:05","slug":"norita-is-sworn-in-as-cnmis-first-fire-commissioner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/norita-is-sworn-in-as-cnmis-first-fire-commissioner\/","title":{"rendered":"Norita is sworn in as CNMI\u2019s first Fire commissioner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Claudio<\/a>
Claudio Norita takes his oath as the first commissioner of the Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services before Gov. Eloy S. Inos at the Fire Station in Susupe yesterday. Also in the photo are Norita\u2019s stepmother, Rosa Lazaro, extreme left, mother Julia Norita, and his son, firefighter Cody Norita. (Ferdie Dela Torre)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first-ever commissioner for the newly created Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services was sworn in at the Susupe Fire Station I yesterday.<\/p>\n

Standing before Gov. Eloy S. Inos, Lt. Gov. Ralph DLG Torres, members of the Legislature, and various government officials, Claudio Norita took his oath to faithfully discharge his duties as DFEMS commissioner.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s always an honor when you\u2019re called to public service,\u201d Norita said in an interview following the ceremony.<\/p>\n

Fourth oath-taking<\/strong>
\nNorita was appointed commissioner by Inos last March and was confirmed by the Senate on Friday.<\/p>\n

Prior to this, Norita also served as executive director of the Criminal Justice Planning Agency and special assistant to the Department of Public Safety.<\/p>\n

He was also an executive director of the Commonwealth Ports Authority. He was elected to the 14th CNMI House of Representatives and was then appointed DPS commissioner in 2008.<\/p>\n

Firehouses and firefighters<\/strong>
\nIn his speech, Norita talked about the firehouses in the CNMI as well as the firefighters manning them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am proud to tell you that every firehouse is manned. They are manned by firefighters who live regular lives like the rest of us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He encouraged the public to visit the firehouses in the CNMI to get to know the people behind the department.<\/p>\n

On Saipan, there are 78 firefighters for six firehouses. Tinian and Rota have one firehouse each.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis and every firehouse is your house. Mi casa, su casa. Please stop by and say hello,\u201d Norita said.<\/p>\n

He reported that all firefighters are EMT certified. Ninety-six percent of them have already administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation, while 35 percent helped deliver at least one baby.<\/p>\n

But still, the department is looking forward to hiring at least 10 more firefighters under their 2016 budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot that needs to be done. Now that we\u2019re an independent department we are able to look at the goals that we can achieve, and look at our resources and go find specific resources for fire and EMS,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Independent<\/strong>
\nWith the fire department being independent, Inos is hoping that it will result in faster response time.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow this fire department is independent of public safety operation, which means they will operate their own budget and there\u2019s a benefit to that,\u201d Inos said<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully that will result in faster response. They\u2019re doing well in the area of EMS, they\u2019re responding well to emergency calls, any kind of assistance,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

When asked what his specific instruction to Norita was, Inos said, \u201cPut out that fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always an advantage when you control your own funding. It does eliminate the layers of bureaucracy that might be involved,\u201d Norita said.<\/p>\n

But for the new commissioner, DPS is still a critical and vital partner in first-response. He also acknowledged that even though DFEMS got separated, they are still \u201cunder the shadow of our mother department.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to work together like Siamese twins. We might be separated financially or budget-wise but in response, we\u2019re together out there,\u201d Norita said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to assure everybody that the separation from DPS will not hamper the services that we are providing, both ambulance and fire protection service,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first-ever commissioner for the newly created Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":201335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,26,4234,35],"class_list":["post-201333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-cnmi","tag-dfems","tag-dps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}