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San Francisco Chronicle
15 hours ago
- General
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Crisis': S.F. fire chief says city's aging fleet could limit capacity to fight major blazes
San Francisco's aging and limited fleet of fire trucks and engines could restrict firefighters' ability to quell the blazes that could rip through the city after a major earthquake, the city's fire chief said. A four-alarm fire that tore through a Nob Hill apartment building in April and injured three people got fire chief Dean Crispen's attention, he said. More than 100 firefighters responded and extinguished the blaze in about two hours, but the event stoked Crispen's lingering fears about worst-case scenarios. 'I would have been concerned that that fire would have continued to burn for several days if it had been subsequent to an earthquake,' Crispen told the Chronicle. If it had, he said, the blaze could easily have spread through Nob Hill to Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf and beyond. That's because more than a third of the San Francisco Fire Department's fleet of fire trucks and fire engines is 20 years old or older, including six front-line trucks and engines that are more than 25 years old, Crispen said. That puts SFFD far out of compliance with the voluntary standards set by the National Fire Protection Association, an industry nonprofit. Those guidelines say that 15-year-old equipment should be moved from front-line service to backup reserves, and 25-year-old equipment should be retired altogether, because outdated equipment lacks the safety upgrades of newer models, said Ken Holland, a senior specialist with the nonprofit. For SFFD to put 25-year-old trucks and engines on the front lines is 'a significant risk,' Holland said. SFFD needs to buy at least 10 fire engines and between seven and 10 fire trucks to meet NFPA standards, Crispen said. In an ideal world, SFFD's 'incredibly busy' fleet would be held to an even more stringent standard, because the city's steep hills and sharp corners mean engines and trucks 'take a fair amount of a beating here,' he said. If and when the Big One strikes, SFFD has a process for recalling as many as 1,000 firefighters into the city. Fires are common in the wake of a major earthquake. Though the 7.9 magnitude quake that roiled San Francisco in 1906 buckled buildings, 80% of property damage came from the fires that followed, sparked by downed power lines and natural gas leaks from broken mains, according to a 1972 federal report. But without enough fire trucks and engines, the reinforcements who respond to those fires could be limited in the help they can give, Crispen said. 'The problem is when they arrive, we currently don't have the apparatus for them to staff to assist in an emergency,' he said. Buying new equipment is challenging because costs have 'skyrocketed' to as high as $2.5 million for a truck and $5 million for an engine, and because supply chain delays that began during COVID have caused production timelines to stretch as long as three years, Crispen said. SFFD ordered three Rosenbauer fire trucks more than a year ago and doesn't expect them to be delivered until next summer, Crispen said. In the meantime, SFFD's aging fleet can run the department more than $500,000 a month in maintenance costs to resolve a 'litany of mechanical problems,' Crispen said. Making repairs requires taking vehicles out of service, and it's hard to find parts that fit old truck and engine models. 'We're in a bit of a crisis at this point,' he said. The Board of Supervisors unanimously passed two pieces of legislation in May intended to expedite the purchasing process by removing bureaucratic hurdles. The ordinances are expected to reach Mayor Daniel Lurie's desk in the coming weeks. One ordinance would allow Lurie, Crispen and a handful of executive staff to court private funding for a period of six months, waiving the usual requirement under the city's behested payment ordinance that prohibits city officials from seeking donations from 'interested parties,' or people who might be eligible for city contracts in the near future. The second ordinance would allow the fire department to negotiate directly with fire apparatus manufacturers, going around the required competitive bidding process. Supervisor Connie Chan, who sponsored both ordinances, said that the twin pieces of legislation were designed to 'fast track' purchasing. 'While our firefighters here in San Francisco are consistently doing their best, the equipment is not keeping up with the demands,' the District 1 supervisor told the Chronicle. Three companies — Rev Group, Oshkosh and Rosenbauer — control as much as 80% of the fire apparatus manufacturing market, according to reporting by the New York Times. 'What is there to bid when it's really monopolized by three companies?' Chan said. Chan said that the board of supervisors has discussed allocating money from the city's budget for the purchases, but that finding the money has been 'difficult.' If Lurie signs the legislation, Chan said, she is hopeful that city officials can raise about $20 million in six months, enough for up to a dozen fire trucks. She expects that the expedited purchasing process could cut the time between ordering and receiving a fire truck down to one year. Chan said she did not know who might donate to the cause, but that she was confident the mayor could leverage his connections. Crispen said the legislation gives him 'some hope' that SFFD can buy the equipment it needs. The department is making a plan for soliciting donations, he said, and 'large corporations would be an obvious starting place.'
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Climate
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS California rocked by earthquake felt for 100 miles
California was hit by a 3.3 magnitude earthquake on Wednesday, along a major fault line overdue for a major one. The US Geological Survey detected the tremor at 9:31am PT outside of Borrego Springs, about 87 miles north of San Diego. California experiences around 27 to 35 earthquakes per day, but most are very small and go unnoticed. However, Wednesday's quake was felt by dozens of people who reported weak to light shaking. The seismic activity comes as scientists warned the Bay Area will soon suffer a devastating earthquake in the next few decades. Sarah Minson from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said this month that the chances of the long-feared 'Big One' striking San Francisco by 2055 have risen to a staggering 72 percent. That is because the region sits on top of the San Andreas Fault, an 800-mile-long fault which runs right through the Bay Area, which is overdue for 'The Big One' - a magnitude 7.8 earthquake or higher. While Minson believes there may be some time left for Californians, USGS disagrees and warns that the first major earthquake will come in just seven years. This is a developing story... More updates to come
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Funding for L.A.'s emergency management unit, vital to Palisades recovery, remains static
Myriad calamities could hit the city of Los Angeles in coming years: Wildfires. Floods. Mudslides. Drought. And of course, the Big One. Yet this month, L.A. leaders once again balked at dramatically increasing the budget of the city's Emergency Management Department, even as the office coordinates recovery from the Palisades fire and is tasked with helping prepare for a variety of disasters and high-profile events, such as the 2028 Summer Olympics. Facing a nearly $1-billion budget shortfall, the L.A. City Council voted 12 to 3 last week to pass a budget that rejected the funding increases requested by EMD leaders to hire more staffers and fix broken security equipment around its facility. The only budgetary increase for EMD will come through bureaucratic restructuring. The department will absorb the five-person Climate Emergency Mobilization Office, which Mayor Karen Bass had slated for elimination in her initial proposal to trim the budget deficit. The funding allotment for EMD — with an operating budget of about $4.5 million — puts the department short of similar big cities in California and beyond. Read more: As L.A. rebuilds from the Palisades fire, residents ask: What's the plan? As a 2022 audit by then-City Controller Ron Galperin noted, San Diego ($2.46), Long Beach ($2.26) and San Francisco ($7.59) all spent more per capita on emergency management than L.A., which then spent $1.56 per resident. Whereas L.A. has a staff of roughly 30, New York, with more than double the population of L.A., has 200 people in its emergency management team, and Philadelphia, with a population less than half of L.A.'s, has 53. The current leaders of EMD, General Manager Carol Parks and Assistant General Manager Jim Featherstone, had specifically requested funding this spring to build an in-house recovery team to better equip the city for the Palisades recovery as well as future disasters. "We are one of the most populous and at-risk jurisdictions in the nation, if not in the world," Featherstone told the L.A. City Council's budget committee April 30. "I won't say negligent, but it's really not in the city's best interest to [not] have a recovery capability for a disaster similar to the one we just experienced.' Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Bass, pushed back against the idea that EMD's funding level would hamper the Palisades fire recovery or preparation for the Olympic Games and 2026 World Cup. "During a difficult budget year, Mayor Bass focused on emergency management to keep Angelenos safe — that absolutely includes ensuring EMD has continued staffing and resources," Seidl said in a statement. "We will continue to push forward with one of the fastest recovery efforts in state history." Councilmember Traci Park — who represents the Palisades — was among the trio on the City Council who opposed the budget that passed last week, citing insufficient funding for public safety as one of her main objections. Read more: With PCH reopening this weekend, state and city tussle over Palisades security plans "It's inevitable that we are going to have another disaster, and we still won't be prepared. We'll be in the same position we were before," said Pete Brown, a spokesperson for Park, who decried cuts to EMD and a lack of resources for the Police and Fire departments. "We got a horrible taste of what it's like when we are not prepared," Brown said, "and despite all of that, we haven't learned a lesson from it, and we are doing the same thing." Rick Caruso, the developer whom Bass defeated in the 2022 mayoral race, called both the budget proposal put forward by Bass and the spending plan approved by the City Council "a blatant display of mismanagement and bad judgment," expressing incredulity over the rationale for EMD's funding level. "We are in an earthquake zone. We are in a fire zone. Come on," Caruso said in an interview. Seidl, Bass' spokesperson, disputed that L.A. had not learned from the Palisades fire and emphasized that the spending on emergency management included "continued and new investments" in EMD as well as the city's police and fire agencies. Emergency management experts, audits commissioned by the city and EMD's current leadership have warned that the department lacked the staff and funding to accomplish its mandate in one of the nation's most disaster-prone regions. 'That department could be the world leader in emergency management, and it could be the standard for the rest of the country, but with a third of the staff and a tenth of the budget that they need, that's not possible,' said Nick Lowe, an independent emergency management consultant and the president and chief executive of CPARS Consulting. The general manager of EMD and an agency spokesperson did not respond to written questions last week about the approved budget. In recent public statements, Parks disclosed that her budget requests this year received opposition and appeared to have been whittled down. She told the Ad Hoc Committee for L.A. Recovery in March that she had sought 24 more staffers at EMD, but that officials under the city administrative officer balked at her request. Read more: The L.A. wildfires left lead and other toxic material in the soil of burn zones. Here are their health risks Featherstone, who is now coordinating the Palisades fire recovery, said Parks' requests received "a qualitative negative response," and suggested that there was a lack of understanding or appreciation of the import of EMD's role. "There was a qualitative opinion not in favor of Ms. Parks having these positions and people who aren't emergency managers opined about the value or the worth of these positions," Featherstone said. Parks said she scaled her request down "given the city's current fiscal situation," adding, "I need a minimum of 10" more positions. In a memo, Parks said these 10 positions would cost about $1.1 million per year. When Bass unveiled her budget proposal, those 10 additional positions were not included; EMD remained at roughly 30 positions, similar to previous years, which costs about $7.5 million when pensions, healthcare and other expenses are included. Bass' budget proposal touted that she was able to preserve all of EMD's positions while other departments faced steep staff and funding cuts. Both Parks and Featherstone had argued for the creation of a designated, in-house recovery team, which EMD has lacked. When the Palisades fire broke out in January, EMD had no person assigned full-time to recovery and instead had to move its limited staff onto a recovery unit. Bass also retained Hagerty Consulting, a private firm, to boost EMD and provide instant expertise on a yearlong contract for up to $10 million, much of which Bass' spokesperson said is reimbursable by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Still, Featherstone has told the City Council that, since L.A. had no in-house recovery expertise, the need to train and create an in-house team has occupied much of the initial Palisades fire recovery effort. Phasing in an in-house recovery and reconstruction division with 10 staffers would cost an additional $1.5 million next year, according to a memo prepared by the city administrative officer. Hiring an additional 21 staffers to prepare for the Olympics and other major events would cost nearly $3 million. Parks also requested $209,000 to repair the video system at the emergency operations center, saying the lack of surveillance cameras posed a threat to city employees. "Multiple incidents have occurred where the safety and security of the facility have been compromised without resolution due to the failing camera system," Parks wrote in a budget memo submitted this spring. The request for funding for replacement cameras was also denied. L.A. officials have long been warned that EMD lacks resources. The 2022 audit by Galperin, the former city controller, found that L.A. provided less emergency management funding than peer cities, and that the COVID-19 pandemic "strained EMD resources and staffing, causing several existing preparedness programs to lag behind, likely impacting the City's readiness for future emergencies." An after-action report on EMD's handling of COVID-19, authored by Lowe, the emergency management consultant, found that the agency was 'undervalued and misunderstood, underfunded, and demoralized.' Parks took over as general manager after the time period covered by Lowe's report. Read more: Trump's FCC delays multilingual emergency alerts for natural disasters, sparking concern in L.A. The lack of training and funding became apparent at a budget hearing in April 2024. Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky asked Parks directly at the meeting: 'With your current budget, are you able to staff your [emergency] response centers 24/7 during emergencies?' 'The answer is no,' Parks said. "If there are multiple days that the emergency operations center needs to be activated, we do not have enough staff.' During the Palisades fire, EMD said it had to bring in additional emergency management officials from other cities to sustain the emergency operations center around the clock. Lowe said L.A. leaders had failed to recognize EMD's role within the broader public safety infrastructure of the city. "I'm not sure at a political level that the city understands and appreciates emergency management and the purpose of the department, and that trickles down to the budget and the size of the department," Lowe said. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Funding for L.A.'s emergency management unit, vital to Palisades recovery, remains static
Myriad calamities could hit the city of Los Angeles in coming years: Wildfires. Floods. Mudslides. Drought. And of course, the Big One. Yet this month, L.A. leaders once again balked at dramatically increasing the budget of the city's Emergency Management Department, even as the office coordinates recovery from the Palisades fire and is tasked with helping prepare for a variety of disasters and high-profile events, such as the 2028 Summer Olympics. Facing a nearly $1-billion budget shortfall, the L.A. City Council voted 12 to 3 last week to pass a budget that rejected the funding increases requested by EMD leaders to hire more staffers and fix broken security equipment around its facility. The only budgetary increase for EMD will come through bureaucratic restructuring. The department will absorb the five-person Climate Emergency Mobilization Office, which Mayor Karen Bass had slated for elimination in her initial proposal to trim the budget deficit. The funding allotment for EMD — with an operating budget of about $4.5 million — puts the department short of similar big cities in California and beyond. As a 2022 audit by then-City Controller Ron Galperin noted, San Diego ($2.46), Long Beach ($2.26) and San Francisco ($7.59) all spent more per capita on emergency management than L.A., which then spent $1.56 per resident. Whereas L.A. has a staff of roughly 30, New York, with more than double the population of L.A., has 200 people in its emergency management team, and Philadelphia, with a population less than half of L.A.'s, has 53. The current leaders of EMD, General Manager Carol Parks and Assistant General Manager Jim Featherstone, had specifically requested funding this spring to build an in-house recovery team to better equip the city for the Palisades recovery as well as future disasters. 'We are one of the most populous and at-risk jurisdictions in the nation, if not in the world,' Featherstone told the L.A. City Council's budget committee April 30. 'I won't say negligent, but it's really not in the city's best interest to [not] have a recovery capability for a disaster similar to the one we just experienced.' Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Bass, pushed back against the idea that EMD's funding level would hamper the Palisades fire recovery or preparation for the Olympic Games and 2026 World Cup. 'During a difficult budget year, Mayor Bass focused on emergency management to keep Angelenos safe — that absolutely includes ensuring EMD has continued staffing and resources,' Seidl said in a statement. 'We will continue to push forward with one of the fastest recovery efforts in state history.' Councilmember Traci Park — who represents the Palisades — was among the trio on the City Council who opposed the budget that passed last week, citing insufficient funding for public safety as one of her main objections. 'It's inevitable that we are going to have another disaster, and we still won't be prepared. We'll be in the same position we were before,' said Pete Brown, a spokesperson for Park, who decried cuts to EMD and a lack of resources for the Police and Fire departments. 'We got a horrible taste of what it's like when we are not prepared,' Brown said, 'and despite all of that, we haven't learned a lesson from it, and we are doing the same thing.' Rick Caruso, the developer whom Bass defeated in the 2022 mayoral race, called both the budget proposal put forward by Bass and the spending plan approved by the City Council 'a blatant display of mismanagement and bad judgment,' expressing incredulity over the rationale for EMD's funding level. 'We are in an earthquake zone. We are in a fire zone. Come on,' Caruso said in an interview. Seidl, Bass' spokesperson, disputed that L.A. had not learned from the Palisades fire and emphasized that the spending on emergency management included 'continued and new investments' in EMD as well as the city's police and fire agencies. Emergency management experts, audits commissioned by the city and EMD's current leadership have warned that the department lacked the staff and funding to accomplish its mandate in one of the nation's most disaster-prone regions. 'That department could be the world leader in emergency management, and it could be the standard for the rest of the country, but with a third of the staff and a tenth of the budget that they need, that's not possible,' said Nick Lowe, an independent emergency management consultant and the president and chief executive of CPARS Consulting. The general manager of EMD and an agency spokesperson did not respond to written questions last week about the approved budget. In recent public statements, Parks disclosed that her budget requests this year received opposition and appeared to have been whittled down. She told the Ad Hoc Committee for L.A. Recovery in March that she had sought 24 more staffers at EMD, but that officials under the city administrative officer balked at her request. Featherstone, who is now coordinating the Palisades fire recovery, said Parks' requests received 'a qualitative negative response,' and suggested that there was a lack of understanding or appreciation of the import of EMD's role. 'There was a qualitative opinion not in favor of Ms. Parks having these positions and people who aren't emergency managers opined about the value or the worth of these positions,' Featherstone said. Parks said she scaled her request down 'given the city's current fiscal situation,' adding, 'I need a minimum of 10' more positions. In a memo, Parks said these 10 positions would cost about $1.1 million per year. When Bass unveiled her budget proposal, those 10 additional positions were not included; EMD remained at roughly 30 positions, similar to previous years, which costs about $7.5 million when pensions, healthcare and other expenses are included. Bass' budget proposal touted that she was able to preserve all of EMD's positions while other departments faced steep staff and funding cuts. Both Parks and Featherstone had argued for the creation of a designated, in-house recovery team, which EMD has lacked. When the Palisades fire broke out in January, EMD had no person assigned full-time to recovery and instead had to move its limited staff onto a recovery unit. Bass also retained Hagerty Consulting, a private firm, to boost EMD and provide instant expertise on a yearlong contract for up to $10 million, much of which Bass' spokesperson said is reimbursable by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Still, Featherstone has told the City Council that, since L.A. had no in-house recovery expertise, the need to train and create an in-house team has occupied much of the initial Palisades fire recovery effort. Phasing in an in-house recovery and reconstruction division with 10 staffers would cost an additional $1.5 million next year, according to a memo prepared by the city administrative officer. Hiring an additional 21 staffers to prepare for the Olympics and other major events would cost nearly $3 million. Parks also requested $209,000 to repair the video system at the emergency operations center, saying the lack of surveillance cameras posed a threat to city employees. 'Multiple incidents have occurred where the safety and security of the facility have been compromised without resolution due to the failing camera system,' Parks wrote in a budget memo submitted this spring. The request for funding for replacement cameras was also denied. L.A. officials have long been warned that EMD lacks resources. The 2022 audit by Galperin, the former city controller, found that L.A. provided less emergency management funding than peer cities, and that the COVID-19 pandemic 'strained EMD resources and staffing, causing several existing preparedness programs to lag behind, likely impacting the City's readiness for future emergencies.' An after-action report on EMD's handling of COVID-19, authored by Lowe, the emergency management consultant, found that the agency was 'undervalued and misunderstood, underfunded, and demoralized.' Parks took over as general manager after the time period covered by Lowe's report. The lack of training and funding became apparent at a budget hearing in April 2024. Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky asked Parks directly at the meeting: 'With your current budget, are you able to staff your [emergency] response centers 24/7 during emergencies?' 'The answer is no,' Parks said. 'If there are multiple days that the emergency operations center needs to be activated, we do not have enough staff.' During the Palisades fire, EMD said it had to bring in additional emergency management officials from other cities to sustain the emergency operations center around the clock. Lowe said L.A. leaders had failed to recognize EMD's role within the broader public safety infrastructure of the city. 'I'm not sure at a political level that the city understands and appreciates emergency management and the purpose of the department, and that trickles down to the budget and the size of the department,' Lowe said.
GMA Network
6 days ago
- Politics
- GMA Network
PHIVOLCS satisfied with public's earthquake awareness
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) expressed satisfaction that more people are knowledgeable about earthquake response in the wake of the magnitude 4.6 temblor that hit Quezon Province on Tuesday. In Chino Gaston's report on '24 Oras,' MRT-3, LRT-1, and LRT-2 operations were temporarily halted as the earthquake was also felt in some parts of Metro Manila past noon. Train tracks were inspected before the resumption of operations. After the earthquake, employees in the Senate, Malacañang, House of Representatives, Commission on Elections, and the Department of Justice were seen calmly evacuating. According to PHIVOLCS, the earthquake's epicenter was located 25 kilometers from General Nakar, Quezon. It lasted for seconds. There have also been no reported casualties or damaged properties so far. 'Ang source po nito ay tectonic. So, may gumalaw po na fault. Hindi natin alam kung anong fault ito. Pwede po natin tawagin local fault. Ibig sabihin local dun sa lugar na iyon. Wala naman po itong kinalaman sa mga paggalaw na iba pang faults,' said Winchelle Ian Sevilla, PHIVOLCS seismology division chief. (The source is tectonic. A fault moved, but we do not know which fault. We can call this a local fault, meaning it is local to the area. It is not related to the movement of other faults.) PHIVOLCS said it is pleased that more people are aware of what to do during an earthquake. 'Mahalaga po dito ang ating mga paghahanda, lalo na ang pakikilahok po natin sa mga earthquake drills upang at least aware po tayo kung ano ang nararapat natin gawin kung sakaling magkakaroon ng isang malakas na lindol. Kailangan natin masigurado na yung ating mga built structures, halimbawa po bahay, buildings, mga hospitals, ito po ay sound po. Ibig sabihin matibay sumunod po sa building code,' Sevilla said. (It's important to prepare, especially in participating in the earthquake drills to at least be aware of what to do should there be an earthquake. We also need to ensure that our structures are sound, sturdy, and follow the building code.) The Office of Civil Defense has been preparing for a strong earthquake, or the Big One, that may affect the eastern section of Metro Manila once there is a massive movement in the West Valley Fault. —Mariel Celine Serquiña/LDF, GMA Integrated News
