OFFICE OF EMERGENCY SERVICES AND LACK OF TRUE LEADERSHIP (10/22/06)
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The Office of Emergency Services under Mayor Gavin Newsom has been pathetic is its performance of having a plan that is realistic and focused on those areas in our City and County of San Francisco that should expect leadership from the Office of Emergency Services (OES).
Led by mostly paper pushers the plan does not follow the current plans and operations used by the Department of Defense and those related agencies that work in a very focus and precise manner to attend to emergency how ever large. The OES plan has NO plan that takes into account the unique situation as it exists in China Town and Hunters Point areas. It fails to state right up front any air support and reliance on heavy equipment none of which this City and County have in place today to tackle a major earthquake of a magnitude that would level most of the homes and buildings in the Avenues and those areas very prone to liquefaction in San Francisco. Any good map reveals this fact. While on paper some Heads of SF Departments that inter act with the present organizational OES structure and mediocre plans may work within some very narrow and unfocused scenarios with the Disaster Council and the Office of Emergency Services fake plans - it fails when taken outside any focused real scenario at China Town and Hunters Point just to mention two of many areas in the City of San Francisco. From its inception the Office of Emergency Services proper has been faking its operations, its time lines and especially its practical objectives. The OES has slowly reached out to the Board of Supervisors, it is attempting to now at this late hour reach out to the constituents of San Francisco, has failed to sign significant Memoranda of Understanding with the State and Federal agencies that can and should fine tune the plans linked to the Office of Emergency as its stands today. It continues to hire mostly Whites that live outside San Francisco that pretend that they will save us and have in place plans to save us when the Big One strikes. It is such foolishness that will hurt us putting our faith and destiny in the hands of greedy consultants. Mayor Gavin Newsom still thinks that San Francisco has the best plans in place. The Mayor has not seen the traffic stand still in place for hours when one single accident takes place during rush hour on Market Street. I have seen it happen twice in the last six months everything comes to a stand still. Our hospitals do not have the plans to accommodate thousands of injured and God forbid if the Big One strikes us when millions come to San Francisco to work during the day time. Our San Francisco population is about 760,000 but this does increase as I stated to millions as many come to work in our Great City of San Francisco. If we have a ball game or a large conference the population increases and with that our Emergency Preparedness still falls short. We still do not have the State of the Art communication and to date our many Emergency Agencies cannot talk to one another with great efficiency. We have NOT learned much from the 9/11 incident because the 9/11 has exposed our deficiencies. We talk the talk but cannot walk the walk. Our Reservoirs are prone to havoc and no one has conducted an independent evaluation of our Reservoirs even though our inept San Francisco Public Utilities Commission purports that all of them are in good shape. Any major earthquake will strike the Phelps Raw Sewage Treatment Plant that lies in the middle of a residential area in the Bayview. The Office of Emergency Services (OES) is oblivious to this real fact. Imagine millions of gallons flooding the neighborhood and the various epidemic scenarios arising from this real fact. The City is placing 3 Combustion Turbines - small power plants on land very prone to liquefaction near Pier 80. I would think the OES would have say in this matter. As it would with the high rises that are in the pipe line with no one paying attention to the Big One and how will the City be able to assure Health and Safety issues on various fronts. San Francisco's OES remains a joke with certain exercises very far fetched. For sure when the Big One strikes no official will visit the Hunters Point Area and for sure the China Town area will be left to the design of Mother Nature. The OES plans in place are so sanitized and bland that some of us trained in the Army and other Agencies would flush down the commode. The Mayor still continues to brag that our City has the best OES plan how ever we do not have a single helicopter that we own with our City and County of San Francisco's $5.7 billion budget. There are other areas that need attention but does anyone think it matters? |
