Lets get started. This meeting will come to order. This meeting is the government audit and Oversight Committee for september 17, 2015. To my right is vice chair Julie Christensen and president breed has appointed supervisor mar in her place. Could i have a motion to excuse president breed for the meeting. So moved. Without objection the motion passes. [gavel] supervisor mar will join us briefly. Hes in traffic right now. The Committee Clerk is erica major and the committee would like to recognize the staff from sfgtv who record each of our meetings and make the transcripts available to the public online. Madam clerk do you have any announcements . Please silent all cell phones and electronic devices. Completed speaker cards and copies of documents to be part of the file somebody submitted to the clerk. Items will be on the september 29 board of supervisors agenda anyplace otherwise stated. Okay. Can you please call item 1. Item 1 is a hearing to discuss the citys Response Plan in the event of a forest or brush fire within the city and county of San Francisco. Okay. So colleagues i have called this hearing today to discuss the Response Plan and the event of a urban forest or brush fire taking place in San Francisco. I want to make it real clear my intent here is to really listen, just to the Fire Department, and to Emergency Management department to really see if were really ready for this type of situation. I know theres been some confusion on this issue. People are thinking that this is about cutting down trees and its not, so i want to make it real clear to the audience and watching this on tv that this is about being ready for forest fires that can happen in the city. As you know San Francisco has many areas that consider many forests. There are places like telegraph hill. Russian hill, mt. Davidson. Golden gate park just throughout San Francisco you have these small areas of heavy vegetation, and i grew up in the russian hill area and i remember as a little kid on the backside of the home basically is a big huge area of everybodys backside in which there were no fences. It was basically vegetation back there and one day it caught fire, and about seven or eight homes got heavily damaged. This was in the 50s, and one of the things that i didnt when i was watching as a kid the firefighters i realized how difficult it was them to get in there to the back, climb up the hills and so forth and that left a mark on me in realizing that fighting that type of fire is really different from fighting a fire of a building, so and here we are. Were faced with a four year drought. Vegetation throughout San Francisco, throughout the bay area, throughout california is rather dry. Even San Francisco is blessed with what we call the natural air conditioning, the fog, it doesnt take that much, that many days like you have two weeks ago when the weather was very hot. A couple of days of hot weather, low humidity will just provide or give you the condition that can be very, very awful for fires, and today is not about lets hope there is going to be a fire. I hope there never be a urban fire like the Oakland Hills in the 90s or if anybody has been around long enough there was the Beverly Hills fire in the 70s. We dont want that to happen in San Francisco but the question today were trying to answer is if there is a fire that catches, whether its a brushes or trees or whatever, are we ready in San Francisco . So thats what were going to answer today. As you know we have seen the deftation just this week of the valley fire in napa, lake and sonoma counties with 61 probably growing. Its more than 61,000 acres of burned area with almost probably i would say 600 homes that got completely burned down. This is just really a reminder we must prepare in San Francisco. I hope this hearing will be fruitful in the discussion how our city departments and how our constituents can work with these departments to do their part to ensure that families and loved ones that safe and our city remains resilient, so first up i would like to call on chief hayeswhite to maybe have some opening remarks and call her staff to talk about this issue. Thank you. Good morning chair yee, supervisor christensen, joe an hayeswhite San FranciscoFire Department. I would like to applaud you supervisor yee and not only youre in my district but i dont recall in my time as chief we had a discussion in the legislative branch of government on this topic so its very timely as you referred there has been great devastation throughout our state throughout the last several months including the fact that we had 30 firefighters deployed. We just had 22 return last night from the butte fire and then we have remaining eight at the valley fire, and so everyone loves to come to San Francisco, but it is challenging from a firefighter perspective. I was a training director for four years and the bulk of training is in relg to structural fight fighting but we have things in the city as you mentioned and the Golden Gate Park and the presidio and a whole number of areas. Also under the freeways there is vegetation as well, so we pride ourselves on training. We have componentos wildlife Fire Fighting and we have groups able of the master mutual aid agreement with the state and we deploy our firefighters per that agreement throughout the state to help battle fires so what we prepared today is a presentation on our resources that we have, some of the training that we have, and then were certainly able to answer any questions for you. I am very appreciative and sensitive to the fact that we have beautiful open space here in San Francisco. As a mother of three boys weve enjoyed many of the parks and so forth although as fire chief i have children just to make sure there is a balance between vegetation as well as good solid urban Forestry Management to mitigate the fuel load as we would call it, and proper attention, and Forestry Management, so i would like now to introduce the deputy chief of operations, Mark Gonzales and give you an update on the vegetation fires in the city and followed by lieutenant mary shea from Fire Prevention and talk about the collaborative efforts with department of public works and recreation and Park Department and a Good Partnership existed and were going to continue to remind everyone including our partners at ucsf. We went through a process two years ago where they did significant training and creation of Defensible Space and were looking at those things as well with them so at the end of the presentation were happy to answer any questions. Good morning supervisor mar as well. Deputy chief gonzales. Good morning supervisor yee, supervisor christensen, supervisor mar. This is my presentation. Its on the urban wild land interface operations. Can you pull it up . Okay. Thank you. So the first slide is just showing from 201215 the types of calls weve had. The list of call types theyre including graphs, brush and vejingtation and vegetation and forest and including trees. This shows some of the specialized equipment we had for a while. Right now theyre stationed in the southeastern part of the city. As chair yee mentioned we have fog and even during the drought the rest of the city, the west and the northwest gets the fog. The best weather is in Hunters Point southeast so thats where its driest and one of the concerns is mclaren park so the four minipumpers are in that area and we have front line stations in the city and a lot of those companies have been trained with immediate need and trained with wild land operations and the chief mentiond that we have over 200 firefighters that do that. The main prusmers able to access areas not accessible by the engines and carry water and equipped with smaller hoses so theyre maneuverable and get in and out quick. We use the minipumpers at special events and get in and out of crowds for trash fires or vegetation fires within the events. Some of the tools that are carried on the minipumpers and some of the engineers one is a pulaiivegy and its on one head and rigid handle of fiberglass. Its a versatile tool for fire breaks and dig soil and chop wood. Often time there is is a little fire up on bush or brush they can knock it out with this and just smoother it. Second specialized tool the mccloud. This combination of rig and tools used by firefighters to cut through things and declare loose surface material. The next slide we have five of these engines that we bought from the state for a pretty good price a few years ago. When we send a strike team out as we did to the butte fire this is the five engineer engines we sent out and it was assistant chief franklin and brought an assistant with him so theyre assigned by the state to the fire whether its structure defense or setting up a defensive line. A lot of the other equipment is wild land use and shovels and the things i mentioned before and wear different personal Protection Equipment so the turn outs and pants that we wear in the city are a lot heavier and these are lighter and there is still Fire Protection but you can imagine being in the heat all day long and going through a diagram yoga class and the training as the chief mentioned. Happens every year as part of our training. We adopted the state interface wildlife manual and be consistent with the state and we work with them on the operations. Could i ask a quick question . Yes, sir. In regards to the 200 firefighters thats been trained how many of them have actually gone taken part in these strike teams or had experience find fighting these fires . I dont have those stats in hand. I would say most of them. Definitely with the last few seasons weve had they have all gotten to experience it i would venture to say. I do know that 2025 years ago when we went out not as many were trained at all. We were city firefighters. We did some of the things if parks or guards got caught we sent them out but we didnt have the minipumpers and training. I am comfortable that all of the firefighters went through this need but as well as this component its 200 so theyre planned to go out on the strike teams and like if Oakland Hills happened again we would pick from the 10 engines we have trained in that specialty as well. Thank you. The next i skipped ahead too much. So the next slide is 2014 is just a grass and outside fire responses. You could see it better on the map here. I thought it show up better on the screen but its denoted by the red flag icons and dispatch called for multiple units is by the blue icons and you cant tell by the size of the map. I apologize by that. If theyre bigger we went to the same area more than once. The little red engines and you can barely see them off mic . Bought from the state. Theyre also in the southeastern part so whether we get called for the mutual aid deployments the process is the engines go to 19th and forsom and meet up with the Strike Team Leader and assistant and grab the equipment there and take off whether going north, south, east supervisor christensen. Can you bring the map up . When we see it closer its easytory read so understandably it seems like some of these are occurring under the edges of Golden Gate Park, some of the open land, but i am seeing clusters of them along major roadways so are those dots that i see and bay street or the embarcadero in the northeast . Yes, where there are patches of open land but actually there is a big correlation if you noticed near the freeways, so a lot of open lands that caltrain has and caltrans excuse me. 101, 280, 80, all along and open patches of lands that we respond to do knock those out. So i am imagining your tracking probable cause for these as well. The roadway could be cigarettes or automobiles but we have encampments in some of the areas. If its not obvious to the officer if its a single unit or a multiunit we send out the task force to find out what the cause is. Would you hazard to guess what the most frequent cause is . I could guess and say youre probably on the right track. Yeah, so its inhabitants or a cigarette and at the off ramp and a bush to the right they throw it out, one or the other. Thanks. We had a pretty good size fire that i consider urban wild land interface but were not considered that type of city. Its a different definition. Its forest near a city. With the fire on the east side, you may remember that and affected the bay bridge traffic a couple of years ago and pretty significant and as i mentioned mclaren park can get going pretty well. The last slide is from 2015 same call types, the imagines are in the same. Engines are in the same place but our objective is protect lives and civilian and department and members and protect the structures and mitigate the situation and i am proud of our teams and they have done a really good job. These fire conditions are [inaudible] members havent seen. Theyre creating their own weather systems and imimpressive of the job and i am proud of them. If you have any questions i am glad to answer them. You talk about other areas of mutual aid and i assume its reciprocated also if we ever needed help . Thats correct. Okay. Which i guess county that would be were in region two. There are six regions in the state. Were in the 1 2 of the region two and its made up of 90 counties. We have an agreement with them. More immediate need we go to front line engines. Everyone else and mutual aid sends five engines and strict strike leaders and we will send out what we can but we have to maintain the fleet in the city. The concern in the city is we have wood buildings in the districts and theyre all next to each other so we need to keep our fleet of engines up to partoo and were trying to get that done as well. Do you know if these other locations, other counties, whether or not theyre as well trained as our firefighters . I would say some i would say most just as or sometimes more because thats what they do predominantly. Thats primarily what they do. And in regards to we have engines here and again theres some freak thing that happened and something gets out of hand do we have access to air lift of water what do you call those airplanes that dump the water . We can order on anything we might need from the state and if the state has the asset we would get it. Do you know where the closest plane would be . I have heard this is pointed out. Last i heard moffett field. Theyre close if we need them. So they can get here within 30 minutes . Now, i would venture to say no because most of the planes are busy at the other fires. Right. But historically throughout the citys history we have never done that. Okay. Supervisor mar. Quickly i wanted to ask about the Golden Gate Park dispatching and also theres an area in Central Heights where the cliff house is where there have been a number of incidences according to the maps and old houses with big backyards that butt up against city and federal property but i see there are single unit dispatches and multiple unit dispatches and there has been some changes in patterns from 20142015 but when its multiple unit dispatch my guess is thats a more severe fire so youre using more units . Theyre want final call types the way it was pup pulled up and initial call types and what they said to the 911 taker and oftentimes theyre people camp fire down by the beach but we had a good fire there i remember in the last two years that was going pretty well and actually some of the companies were asking for minipumper engines over there and its a compromised area and it would entail getting another minipumper which is a little bit of money. Right. And most of the Golden Gate Park is in district 1. I see that the katy tang district site had significantly more for an increase in a year of the single unit dispatches along lincoln way and do you see patterns and changes like that as the homeless shift isnt park . I would agree where youre going with that maybe. I havent been around Golden Gate Park lately. My travel is from Bernal Heights in that area but i dont know if the Homeless Population has increased in Golden Gate Park. I dont know. The last thing i wanted to complement you on a tie clib and it looks like a pulaski and its cool. I can give you one. Lets make sure we all get one. Okay. Lieutenant booshay for the rest of the presentation. Hi. Good morning. Lieutenant mary shay with the Fire Prevention at the Fire Department. As you can tell im trying to prevent fires so from my end i try to do what i do to prevent fires. Regarding the management of forest and brush fire in San Francisco from prevention we got a look how the city is like. Although we cannot really say were totally a wild land urban interface Area Supervisor as you know we have pockets that we consider so. One of the main and important things about San Francisco were a urban city that doesnt fall under chapter of the city code and deals with other zones and the other important thing that the Fire Protection of responsibility of San Francisco falls under the local authority