San Francisco moves to fold disability and aging needs into emergency plans

Nicole Bond of the Mayor's Office on Disability told the Mayor's Disaster Council that city efforts to include people with access and functional needs in emergency planning have moved from recommendations into implementation.

"This is a work group established in 2017 to address emergency communication, transportation, evacuation and sheltering for people with disabilities and access and functional needs," Bond said, describing a bi-monthly work group made up of city agencies, nonprofits and community organizations. She said the program is aligning its priorities with the World Health Organization's age-friendly framework and is in a five-year implementation phase.

Bond listed near-term priorities the council will track: training for seniors, people with disabilities and caregivers; an outreach campaign to increase registration in AlertSF; and a consistent strategy for evacuating people with mobility challenges from multi-story buildings. "We are focusing on ensuring that people with mobility challenges know how they will be evacuated in multi-story buildings," she said.

Bond said the AFN group is working on durable medical equipment planning (wheelchairs, oxygen tanks and other devices) and closer coordination with the Fire Department and other operational teams to ensure safe evacuations. She also emphasized outreach to deaf, hard-of-hearing and blind or low-vision communities that have sometimes been excluded from prior planning.

A member of the Commission on Aging asked Bond to present the program to that commission so those members can learn the details and support outreach. Bond closed by asking council members to help spread the AlertSF registration message and to support cross-agency implementation.

The council said it will continue tracking these efforts as part of the Mayor's Disaster Council agenda; no formal policy vote was taken.