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Fire mutual aid, soft-story retrofits and heat resilience featured at Disaster Council
Summary
The city reported ongoing wildfire mutual-aid deployments and staffing challenges, and the chief resilience officer updated the council that the soft-story retrofit deadline passed (affecting about 5,000 buildings and ~112,000 residents) with high permit-submission rates; the city also outlined a concrete-buildings program and a year-long heat and air-quality resilience planning effort.
San Francisco officials reported continued deployments to statewide wildfires, an update on mutual-aid staffing and planned resilience investments including seismic retrofits and a new heat-action planning process.
Director Carroll said San Francisco has been sending staff to support neighboring counties during wildfire season and noted the Fire Department, Sheriff's Office and Animal Care & Control have all contributed personnel. "Since late August, San Francisco Fire Department has deployed 30 staff," Carroll said, and she introduced Chief Nicholson to provide more detail.
Chief Nicholson described summer deployments: "We had over 75 members deployed to different fires over the summer," he said, and noted the department has more than 200 members trained for wildland deployment but that statewide staffing shortages remain the year's biggest challenge. He added the department has staffed incident-management teams and used strike teams at the Dixie, 3 Rivers Complex and Fawn fires.
Brian Strong, chief resilience officer, told the council the soft-story retrofit ordinance (passed in 2013) reached a compliance deadline on Sept. 15 that affects buildings with five or more units; he said about 99% of affected buildings submitted permits and over 83% have completed construction. Strong said the city is launching a concrete-buildings program aimed at pre-1980 structures with potential reinforcement needs and is developing a cross-sector heat-and-air-quality resilience plan that will recommend capital investments and building-retrofit strategies over the next year.
Why it matters: the mutual-aid deployments and staffing constraints affect the city's ability to sustain responses as wildfire season continues; the retrofit and resilience work affect housing safety, emergency recovery capability and future capital prioritization. No votes were taken; the council moved to a member roundtable and adjourned.
