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Golden Guardian and waterfront drills highlight gaps in mutual aid and communication
Summary
After the Golden Guardian exercise the city reported strong interagency performance but identified delays from state-level mutual aid; a vessel mutual aid (VMAP) drill drew tenant complaints and prompted a planned letter to the Coast Guard to improve notification and coordination.
City emergency staff used the Golden Guardian exercise to test a 24-hour activation and to stress interagency coordination across a multi-county region. Rob, the exercise lead, said the EOC stood up as expected and departments "really came to the table," but that state-level response timing exposed a vulnerability: "we had requests...that they didn't get back to us until after midnight," he said, arguing the city needs to be able to stand on its own for at least 72 hours.
Fire and EMS leaders described Day 2’s simulated structural collapse and concurrent fires. "We brought in about a million and a half pounds of concrete to simulate this structural collapse," the fire lead said, describing search-and-rescue operations, use of search dogs and City College of San Francisco students as moulaged victims. The exercise tested EOC management under a model where the Division of Emergency Services facilitates and the Fire Department took overall lead for an earthquake with fires.
The meeting also reviewed a recent vessel mutual aid (VMAP) exercise led by the U.S. Coast Guard. Lieutenant Kyle Merkins recounted a mass-rescue scenario near Piers 30–32 in which multiple vessels coordinated to recover mannequins representing 40–50 victims and transferred them to ferries for triage. Communications were run on the Coast Guard marine channel and patched to 800 MHz shore channels; Merkins said "communications were solid. Everything else was very well organized."
Some waterfront tenants complained that the VMAP drill occupied private property without adequate notice and caused disruption. City staff acknowledged the complaint and said a joint letter to the Coast Guard will clarify expectations for notification and tenant outreach. A city planner said the Coast Guard was the lead agency for the VMAP drill and that the city would follow up to improve communication.
Officials also previewed an AT&T Park exercise aimed at validating evacuation and multi-casualty triage for a large ballpark event; planners hope to recruit roughly 2,000 volunteers to exercise interchange with private-clinic and ambulance partners in a confined footprint to test the first hours of a mass-casualty incident before regional mutual aid arrives.
