The Hawaii State Chapter of the American Heart Association and the state Department of Transportation honored  a state official for his work in getting defibrillators installed at Hawaii’s  airports.

They said yesterday that Airports Fire Chief Martinez Jacobs has made Hawaii’s airports safer for all.

There are currently 127 Automatic External Defibrillators at 13 airports on six islands. The devices can monitor for deadly irregular heartbeats and shock the heart back to a normal rhythm.

Over 1,200 state transportation employees are trained to use defibrillators.

Ten out of 12 people who have went into cardiac arrest at Hawaii airports since the defibrillators were installed in 2007 survived.

There was no known survivor before 2006.