our views, and i do want to be a part of that committee that you are starting 4 rec and park, i am across the street from kimball, and i don't see people from the community at all. we want to see an overview of who your funding in our community and we want to make sure people are doing what they're supposed to be doing. thank you a lot, mayor lee. thanks, ross. hopefully this is not the last time that you come out. i hope you do stick to what you said and get your old job back. hopefully we can work together again once you become sheriff appeared >> thank you. this is going to be the final speaker. then we will wrap up. >> how are you all doing today? i represent more real tv. i want to say, support your up- and-coming on some heroes. ross mirkarimi, you have a young

man in your district, manny. people talk about safety. maybe we need to support heroes who are doing something to create more safety. boxing is growing in the bay area. take a look at this. i saw kareem and his brother packet out. it is all about the numbers. support that and look into that. support your new up-and-coming heroes. god bless you all. >> thank you. let's give a round of applause to the public and their contributions to tonight's discussion, to all of you. we have just a few more cards we did not get to, but the topics, i will just read them out to you. perhaps of people want to continue the discussion afterward, i encourage you to do so, or talked to some

representatives of the city family here. there were concerns about the ecology contract. is it good for ratepayers? there were cards about pg&e. what about smart meters and the safety and reliability of pg&e? there was another card that spoke about, we want more urban gardens. there was an example laid out of a park and other work that has been done here in transforming blighted areas into wonderful urban gardens. and a card about homeless, how the homeless seem to be hanging out quite a bit under the walkways that lead to the rec and park areas off steiner and webster, and what police, rec and park, and others can do about that. those were the other themes in the cards. we hit every other card and the theme identified. i want to thank mayor lee.

the new police chief and the whole rest of the city family, for being here. most of all, i want to thank all of you. we come in our district, have made tremendous gains, no matter what neighborhood you come from. i look at the economics that weekly. i look of the public safety stats. i look to the general health and wellness that. many neighborhoods, particularly the ones in the sector, have overcome a lot of challenges, a lot of problems. it would never happen if it were not for the service and leadership and the activism of so many of you that are here tonight. i want to say thank you. thank you for the collaboration between you and the city. we have got more work to do. at least we got some answers here tonight. everybody have a good night. remember, june 18 and 19, come and celebrate. have a good night.

>> distinguished guests, colleagues, thank you all for attending this seismic risk mitigation of leadership forum. i am the president of renaissance art sciences. we are honored and delighted to be able to sponsor this 6 seismic mitigation event. we also want to thank our partners and the insurance institute for home safety.

this is our first forum and are pleased to be joined in our current efforts by our colleagues and co-sponsors, the engineering earthquake institute and the pacific engineering research center. i will try to be briefed today because we have two important people to speak, but i wanted to talk about the work of this forum and reflect on what we can achieve together in the next two days drawing on the disbursed knowledge base provided by each of you today. participating in this form are representatives and leaders of many disciplines within the field of earthquake mitigation. we hope there will be focusing on creating linkages between researchers and practitioners which will ultimately benefit policymakers, who will encourage safer communities in the face of catastrophic events. as with all forms of a sponsor, we do not charge anyone to attend or pay any of the speakers.

all of the in speakers -- all of the speakers and informed delegates are here for an open and honest debate. we only ask that you sharebe tot of others opinions. the devastation we have all witnessed over the past few years has been a constant reminder of the importance of our mission which we share with the leaders here to make resiliency a public value. a series of forums has been an english and for us and the disaster peppered his community. we discussed mitigation for many areas, but our meeting here is intended to recognize this state for its leadership and seismic mitigation and also to say that more needs to be done in our california communities to make ourselves earthquake-resilient. we're also asking for leaders to

reach out in their states to help in their size but mitigation by leveraging your experience. and as we begin to reinvest in this economy, this is an opportunity for california to be a leader and create its next silicon valley. i do not think we could have better individuals today to open up this form and emphasize the urgency for court knitted earthquake science aimed at making people safer. i am personally honored to introduce both of our guests today, mayor edwin lee of the city and county of san francisco, and mayor gene kwan of the city of oakland. it is important to highlight the corporation. to give you a city that are for

ever linked by earthquakes. with the bay bridge near its completion, these two individuals have been building their own bridges between many bay area communities. both have made significant strides toward moving toward resiliency in the face of earthquake hazards. we will hear from mayor lee first. as city administrator, he has been working with the department of the emergency management to oversee san francisco's disaster recovery and response effort, in gauging with many department to coordinate disaster operations. i also want to know mayor li has provided a lot of behind-the- scenes support for the recovery effort in new orleans, and i am sure this experience has prompted him to launch an innovative disaster recovery program that has evolved into the disaster resilience san francisco initiative.

we applaud the mayor's ongoing efforts in his effort to implement the recommendations of the community action plan for seismic safety. recommendation that will make the city more resilient in a major earthquake. after mayor lee, we will hear from the honorable mayor of oakland, gene kwan, and he has focused on many programs including earthquake safety for schools, including open in passed legislation that encourages seismic strengthening for single-family and multifamily homes. the mayor has also traveled to washington, d.c. 2 lobby for more resources for seismic mitigation and continues to be a important voice on this issue. both have been colleagues and friends for a number of years and i think this has opened up

and strengthen the relationship between these two cities. in no small way, this is making a difference and politics and actual collaboration is going on which simply did not occur before. their interest in being here today together is exactly the collaborative leadership we seek to build in the size of this -- seismic risk leadership forum. so it is my honor and distinct pleasure to introduce to you the honorable mayor of san francisco that when -- edwin m. lee. [applause] >> good afternoon. it is my pleasure to join all of you here to be at this seismic risk mitigation leadership forum. it is also my good pleasure to be joining jean quan once again

because we can go further from identifying each other's faults to identify each other's faults. that is what we are here today for. jean has known me for many years and it is a pleasure working with her now. we both have obviously important cities to work on behalf of, but more importantly, when seismic activities, they will never happen locally. there will always be regional. we have been planning for it. it is because of all of you in this room, from all of your credit vise. i just want to know my appreciation for this leadership forum. the sponsors for this forum have been so important, entities that i have familiarizing myself with for some time now. renaissance risk sciences foundation, whether predict, fedor alliance for safe homes,

institute for business and home safety, bay area research institute, pacific earthquake engineering research center, and so many others of you, including our departments working together. i know our dbi director is here. fire, police. our dem as well have all been a part of looking at so many programs that we have been able to put together for the effort to make ourselves resilience and to pay attention to the newer area of science beyond response, and that is to help our city and region recover quickly. we know what our role is in terms of the u.s. economy and world economy. as all of you know, we take seismic safety seriously in san francisco. we have been working on so many different programs. our office of emergency

management, fire department, first responders all have been preparing for the big one for so long. and we know that the big one is about to come. the percentages increase, as you have informed us. many of you, in your expertise, a 65% chance that in the next 25 years, is what is being predicted. working closely with the fire department, certainly, we have a close relationship with chief white. now i can also reflect with you a strong relationship with a new police chief. who could have known that just last week, as we have appointed a new police chief that chief greg sur had spent many years with our public tilly's commission, working on the seismic and homeland security aspects of our water system.

now he is our police chief and we get to work with him again, not only as one of the lead responses in the city with a fire department, but to have that additional experience working with us, when he was out of uniform and part of one of our most important infrastructure is of the city. i have had a chance to work with our city capital planning group. now we are involved in our building inspection and planning department working on ambitious hazard mitigation planning and implementation projects in their daily operations. of course, as i mentioned earlier, with the public still is commission and their seismic upgrade of our water system. i had a chance to work with our city engineer, department of public works. getting to work with the city engineer on performance and

infrastructure. that has been a delight. and as the most exciting part, working with people in our partnerships with harbor kennedy school. we have all been focused -- a whole city family -- people in finance, neighborhood empowerment networks -- to strengthen our neighborhoods to get the more prepared. you use programs like nert, but you go beyond that because it is only about response, and you use it to talk about neighborhood capacity. that is what i have been doing my life, whether on the civil rights ankle, or on the emergency and seismic retrofit preparations, building the capacity of our neighborhoods. one lesson that i have learned, one that i will never forget, and now as the mayor of the city

get to emphasize, as i stood on the plains of the ninth board in new orleans some years ago and watched how devastated that community was, i made a personal promise to myself. in any capacity that i served the city, i would do my best not to abandon those neighborhoods that were the poorest, the most disenfranchised, and to suggest to this city that we have a better way of repairing ourselves, that we now have a chance to offer that relationship to make it stronger so that each game -- neighborhood of our city will, today, have an opportunity to say we will be here after the big event happens. not only are they will come, we are planning for their very existence, survival, and recovery. how does that kind of message resonate today in all of the neighborhoods that we feel -- they feel are abandoned by their book of government?

to suggest we want them here, that we can build capacity today, and that they will be as much a part of our infrastructure and planning as our best institutions, whether museums, libraries, schools, all a part of that fabric. that, to me, is exciting. to be able to have a community action plan for seismic safety, the caps program, have told us where our most vulnerable buildings are, and to work on that today. thanks to these experts telling us about our soft buildings. lawrence is here with our dbi group, pushing us to go forward on soft story buildings. they are making sure that we are paying attention to that. the financing is not yet there,

but we will get there. we will make sure that those buildings do not hurt us. we understand that represents a lot of our vulnerable communities, where affordable housing is located. our unique partnership with the harvard kennedy school is helping us with our lessons learned from new orleans. i still meet with professor leonard, city leaders, but occasionally, to give them updates on our recovery program, neighborhood empowerment programs, and we continue to be updated about where we are at the national level. and of course, we are still taking lessons from everything from not only chile, new zealand, new orleans, but now the newest set of tragedy. what they are doing in alabama and mississippi, what they are doing in those disasters, as we

focus on our seismic expectations. i continue to pay a lot of attention to the new seismic lifelines council that we created, through my work in the city administrator's office. that council continues to be unique as it brings together all of our utility agencies in the city, whether the departments or private sector, bringing them in the same room to talk about our gaps, about what we can recover, whether it is pg&e, telecommunications, or emergency coordination with our public utilities commission, having the heads of our fire and police department there, building department there, listening and understanding our role as the lifeline council identifies those things that we need today to strengthen our ability to recover quickly. all of these practices we are

doing, i could brag about them, but i tend to look at the work they have in front of them more and more. so much work has to be done, going forward. i thank all of you for this sixth annual leadership forum. you will continue to remind us where the gaps are, where we have to pay attention to, how can we do better in the preparation of our city and region? it goes to show that while we do everything as locally as possible, i will continue to pay attention to our regional effort. that is where mayor quan and chuck reed are all working. this is have an unprecedented partnership we have never had before. mayor quan, reed, and i are closely down with the preparatory work we are doing, and we will not leave each other alone.

mutual aid between our cities and counties are so important. we are working today on the interoperability of our regional cities for the big event. we are setting ourselves up for success in the first challenge that we have, getting interoperable communications up and running, so that local police and fire and emergency systems can communicate with each other. so when we work on interoperability issues in our city, we knew it was not good enough. we knew it had to be on a regional basis. now we are making commitments from the federal government, federal agencies, to a effectuate that. so i wanted to give you a glimpse of what was on my mind as the mayor of this great city, to embrace the work you do, to take your advice very seriously, and to give our whole fit -- city family and regional

family an opportunity to succeed. my goal, ultimately, is to work with you, not only to reduce risk, but i think i can also effectuate a significant reduction in fear itself. fear of this earthquake impacting us in the most negative way. you saw how devastating the loss was in japan. 26,000 lives lost. that is the whole city family of employees. the fear that kind of event occurs -- i think we have an opportunity in our short lifetimes to eliminate fear of seismic activity, if we plan, practice, continue exercising, if we continue the disciplined approach of reducing our risk in every way possible. and it is with your help and leadership that we can do this. thank you very much for holding

this forum. thank you for having me today. i appreciate it. [applause] >> good afternoon. it is horrible being the speaker after lunch. stretch a little bit. ed and i are particularly happy to be working on so many different issues. this is probably one of the most important ones, one, that in these economic times, would be easy to forget or say. let's just hope that it does not happen on our watch. the reality is, we do not know when it is going to happen. i do not know about ed, but i answer all the phone calls in the middle of the night, even when it is the wrong number. i tried to remember to keep my

satellite telephone charged in case the big what happens and all phones are down. we live with the fact that we may be in charge on the day that it finally happens. we all hope that it does not happen, that we want to be as prepared as we can. as the introduction pointed out, this has been more than a passing interest for me. i remember 20 years ago when i became a school board member in oakland, we have not had a school bond, had not repaired the schools in 20 years, and i said, what about seismic issues? the staff looked at me and said, you do not want to ask about that. if you do the study and find out which schools are in trouble, we do not have the money to fix it, and we will be sued. >i said if we do not fix it, our children could die. for me, and the issue of what we need to do -- as much an issue

of political will as it is of your tax their expertise -- you need to help those of us who have to help find that political will, give us the data, and frankly, do a bit of political -- some of you are very good. some of you are actually pretty good at working around the edges, making sure the legislation addresses what we need to do. i can remember working with neighborhood groups,p pta's, and creating an book for what fema now uses for elementary school during earthquakes. what i did for the city council also was create a wildfire district. houses in the fire zone -- there

is this unique, urban, wildfire interface. i do not know if you have to worry about raccoons, mountain lions, and wild turkeys. but i have to worry about those and the redwood forest on the edge of my city. we pass one of the first wild fire districts in the state. i should have put a cost of living increase in there. we get about $65 per household, and we use that for vegetation management, extra fire patrols during the fire season. right now, we are mostly using it for an eir, so that we can start building fire breaks in the hills and other areas. we are now really living on borrowed time. for those of you on the hayward fault, we are now in the 142nd year in every 140-year earthquake. we are two years behind the

average. we know, in our area, should there be an earthquake tomorrow, we could lose up to 15,000 lives. one-third of the rental housing in oakland as well. to me, that is our katrina. like in new orleans, where they knew that the dikes had to be repaired, we know that if we can retrofit our buildings -- and in my city, about $4,000 per house. we can save an average of a half a million dollar home in our city. we need to think in new ways to get people to have that sense of urgency. in oakland, similar to san francisco and berkeley, recently we had an association come to

the government and what through our most of barbel areas. most of the buildings are vulnerable -- most of the boulder buildings are apartment buildings. we had a group of engineers looking at bill -- buildings and established a list and we send mail to all the landlords of all thathose buildings, giving themx months to one year to do a study, a basic study, to see if they are soft story building. then the city will have to decide whether we will move on a voluntary program or on amonte -- mandatory program, like berkeley. i just pray that we have enough time. along those lines, we have

undertaken a couple of major statewide issues with abag, allies in san francisco and other cities. we are asking for clear seismic retrofitting standards. why is that important? after loma pripet know, a lot of people in oakland got their homes retrofitted. we did a study and it showed 60% of those retrofits would not meet the standards of what we consider a decent retrofit. we have been nagging the legislature to develop basic standard. they had develop standards for single-family homes, probably have approved similar standards like it. they have not yet done it for soft story buildings and multi- family houses. i know there are international standards, so there needs to be a political will, so that when people spend their money, it is spent well. we have also been trying to