Officials from federal, state and county emergency response agencies gathered at the Honolulu Fire Department's Charles H. Thurston Training Center yesterday to address the onset of O'ahu's annual brushfire season.

The moment was also a chance for the HFD to showcase one of its newest weapons in the fight against wildfires: a compressed air foam system that offers firefighters both offensive and defensive capabilities.

"The introduction of this technology is a huge leap forward," said HFD Battalion Chief Emmet Kane, moments after a demonstration left training field vehicles and foliage looking as if they'd been hit with a Christmas snow blizzard.

"It's like when Honolulu went from horse-drawn pumpers to mechanized pumpers. It improves firefighter safety and improves our effectiveness," Kane said.

HPD now has seven new engines equipped with the system that allows firefighters to customize foam types on the spot to fit the need. It can extinguish flames better using less water, or it can coat a structure to prevent it from catching fire.

The message going into O'ahu's wildfire season is two-fold, Honolulu Fire Chief Kenneth Silva said.

"One is that you have a lot of agencies working together to protect the public," Silva said. "The second thing is that even with all these resources, we need the public to assist us."

Organizations on hand included the Honolulu Police Department, the Federal Fire Department, U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii, Honolulu Board of Water Supply, the American Red Cross, the National Weather Service, and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, Division of Forestry and Wildlife.

"We average about 500 fires a year," HFD spokesman Capt. Terry Seelig said. He said hot, dry weather this time of year means a greater risk of fires starting and spreading.

In 2005, there were more than 700 wildfires on O'ahu, making it the costliest brushfire season in modern history for the island.

"Most of these fires are set maliciously," said police Maj. Michael Moses, in charge of District 8 police along the Wai'anae Coast.

In the first eight months of 2005, more than 7,000 acres went up in smoke, Moses said. He thanked residents who have called in to report suspicious behavior, saying it led to arrests of a number of arsonists.

In 2007, a deliberately set wildfire on the North Shore prompted school closures, destroyed crops and caused people to evacuate from their homes, although no houses burned. Among other victims were some of Hawai'i's fragile indigenous plant life.

"That 2007 fire killed 95 percent of the remaining yellow hibiscus brackenridgei in the wild," said Kapua Kawelo, with the Army's Natural Resource Program. "That's Hawai'i's state flower."