San Francisco intensifies emergency exercises ahead of America’s Cup, Golden Gate Bridge anniversary and Fleet Week

San Francisco officials told the Disaster Council they are accelerating multi‑agency preparedness work and large‑scale exercises ahead of a busy event season that includes the America’s Cup, the Golden Gate Bridge 70th anniversary and Fleet Week.

Mayor Lee said the city must be vigilant as the events draw large crowds, noting, "500,000 people on maybe a weekly basis during those events come in" and urging partnerships across city departments, nonprofits and businesses to improve public safety and long‑term recovery.

Rob Dudgeon, who leads special‑events planning for the city, outlined a series of exercises the city ran and plans to expand. For the America’s Cup, staff staged three exercises: a multi‑agency workshop, a "good day at the races" operational run‑through and a simulated "bad day" mass‑casualty scenario that tested demonstrations, crowd incidents and other contingencies. Bijan Karimi said nearly 50 agencies took part in workshop sessions and more than 100 participants engaged in later exercises.

Dudgeon also described Fleet Week preparations with three simultaneous tracks planned for summer exercises: command and control (including route‑clearance and debris management scenarios), tactical communications (bringing military and city communications experts together) and medical‑surge training. The medical‑surge track will introduce hospital planners to the National Disaster Medical System; if the plan proceeds, hospital staff would board military aircraft to practice patient movement to Moffett Field and back as part of a 2013 patient‑movement exercise.

The exercises aim to identify gaps in coordination between city, regional and Department of Defense partners and to give local hospital operations and the city emergency operations center practical experience making rapid decisions under stress. Council members asked for post‑exercise briefings and early drafts of action plans so they can share accurate information with their constituencies.

Diana, the city’s special events coordinator, described operational details for the Golden Gate Bridge 70th‑anniversary program on May 27, including a series of waterfront events and a fireworks display scheduled between about 9:00 and 9:30 p.m.; she said the bridge will be closed for fireworks setup and that planning reaches across jurisdictions including the Golden Gate Bridge Authority and CHP.

The council framed the upcoming exercise sequence as an opportunity to validate written plans, practice communications across networks and rehearse complex logistics for moving patients and maintaining services elsewhere in the city while concentrating resources on event footprints. The city emphasized that these are exercises to test operational readiness rather than declarations of new policy.