San Francisco disaster council reviews World Series response, names Anne Cronenberg as DEM director

San Francisco officials on the city's Disaster Council on the final meeting of 2010 reviewed after-action findings from recent large public events, described rapid emergency-operations activations and medical responses, and announced Anne Cronenberg as the incoming director for the Department of Emergency Management.

Rob Dudgeon, the Department of Emergency Management's emergency services director, said the city activated its Emergency Operations Center for two recent events and that teams performed well under limited notice. "We had something come in... like, 36 hours to actually come up with a plan for the celebration," Dudgeon said, describing the compressed timeline for finalizing public-safety plans after the team clinched the World Series. He said the activation was "a good activation drill" that exposed strengths and areas needing improvement.

Officials credited partner agencies and mutual-aid resources for handling on-the-ground needs. Dudgeon said the California Medical Assistance Team (CALMAT) set up a clinic at a Civic Center site that treated "over 100 patients" for mostly minor injuries; patients who needed more care were transported to hospitals. The city also reported effective Red Cross engagement and coordinated police and fire crowd control, though several speakers acknowledged frequent on-the-fly adjustments as crowds shifted.

Speakers identified information sharing as a persistent challenge. City staff said an RFP is under way for a new incident-management platform intended to help horizontal and vertical information flows, but emphasized that technology alone is not the solution: "It's a people issue. It's a training issue," one official said.

Accessibility for people with functional needs also drew attention. Officials described reports from the celebration about motorized wheelchairs running out of battery power while trying to navigate parade routes and said those issues and a submitted list of accessibility concerns will be incorporated into after-action recommendations, operations orders and training.

Other preparedness investments and changes highlighted at the meeting included expanded exercises and field drills (numbers cited by speakers during the presentation), upgrades to the outdoor warning system, outreach tools such as 72hours.org and Alert SF, and steps to create a hardened backup for 911 calls (using a 311 facility configured to operate as a backup call center). City staff also described improvements to the city's disaster-service-worker program and work with the controller's office PeopleSoft team to upload employee skills and training to enable deployment by skill rather than only job code.

In personnel news, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced the city had offered the DEM director post to Anne Cronenberg and that she had accepted. Cronenberg was not present at the meeting; speakers cited her prior work on recovery planning and described her as the incoming director who will begin outreach to the council and partner agencies.

Officials said the formal after-action reports remained in draft and would be circulated for comment; the reports will include recommended operational changes, accessibility measures and any identified procurement or training needs. The meeting closed with acknowledgments to staff and partner agencies and a call for continued emphasis on preparedness and recovery work going forward.