representation to this hearing. is there a representative from pg&e here? >> good morning, supervisors. my understanding is that the rep is on their way. they should be here shortly. i am prepared to review what we have done to date. supervisor mirkarimi: we look forward to that. i just wanted to make sure we have a well-rounded cast. supervisor chiu: we have just been joined by supervisor maxwell. any initial comments? or should we proceed to presentation? supervisor maxwell: i wanted to

thank you all for coming in. this is an extremely important issue. looking around the country, people are more concerned about infrastructure issues than ever. what has happened recently for us brought it home. i look forward to hearing where we are, what we have done, and where we are going. supervisor chiu: i understand that the fire chief is here specifically regarding item number four, although there may be questions posed to you regarding item #3. madam fire chief? >> thank you. supervisors maxwell and chiu, i applaud you for bringing this resolution fourth. we are obviously concerned about the safety of our citizens

in light of the events of september 9. very soon after that explosion on the ninth, i have one of my deputy chiefs with me as well. on the morning of september 10 the mayor put together this review committee. we had a review worker. part of item #4 is explaining the overview end of day of what has happened in the last few days since that explosion. i would be happy to answer any questions for you. my understanding is that some of the people we have worked with, as well as mr. johnson, are on their way to provide any information that they can. basically, this is a

chronological history of what we have done since the explosion. so, we will get started. as i mentioned at the top of my presentation, the utility infrastructure safety review was formed on september 10 of this year just following the explosion. the mayor appointed myself to be the review in light of the explosion. the goal and objectives include for us to determine the lions, age, location, and maintenance. distinguishing transmission lines and distribution lines in the city. on september 15 we had a meeting at the fire department headquarters. basically it was to let them know that the review panel had

been formed and begin the dialogue of what we had been expecting to have a better understanding of what happened and make sure that it does not repeat itself in this city or any other city. we discussed objectives, time lines, and what we would do as we move forward. we talked about pipeline shut down practices in the history that were discussed specific to san francisco. we also requested detailed maps of the natural gas pipeline infrastructure within the city and county. on september 16, the following friday after the explosion, several of us went to the mayor and did a site visit where the explosion occurred. following up on that, september 23 we had requested maps officially i am writing, not only at that meeting, that there

was a delivery to the fire department maps of the city and distribution lines and transmission lines coming into the city. the main difference was also explained that there are distribution lines throughout the city. the transmission lines, obviously under much higher pressure, causing an explosion or part of the explosion, there are three main transmission lines coming into san francisco. on that day the gas line distribution maps were delivered to the san francisco fire department headquarters. the goal would be to have a shared with members in the department. with a better understanding and so forth. on nine -- don the 29th of september, members of my staff

and commissioners, rather than meeting at the department we went over to pg&e, reviewing their emergency operations plan. we took a look at their center and looked at how they went into action on the ninth. we also went upstairs to where they have a gas operations center. they showed us their math, which is fairly high tech and very much in real time, able to determine pressure and so forth. supervisor chiu: by the way, i wanted to mention that we have been joined by supervisor chu. supervisor maxwell: one of the

issues during that time was turning off the gas itself. did they give you a procedure it was a manual procedure as it was in san bruno. automatic shutdown procedures or remote shutdown procedures for that. supervisor maxwell: is there anything that happens if the pressure gets above or below that? there is no automatic shut down for monitoring that goes on? >> there is definitely monitoring that goes on, but in terms of shutting down by understand it is a manual procedure. i would like to defer to the gas experts that will be here shortly. we have mats and distribution

lines and where those stations are for the shutdown. they are manual at this point. supervisor maxwell: in sentences go we have installed -- in san francisco we have installed [unintelligible] which is my interest. >> a great pointed to make. i believe that jackie's der is already calling for research into that. we did pose that question to him and i think it would be great for him to describe to you what pg&e intends to do to address that. ok? continue? on october 12 we asked pg&e to provide us training regarding

natural gas to the san francisco fire department. we had about 50 people that receive that training. i will indicate that we have a very strong working relationship with pg any, particularly on the electrical side. that is where we have had problems in the past with issues to work through. in light of san bruno, but we have indicated we would like to do is have the same type of relationship in terms of making the input panels that we have already enjoyed on the electrical side. supervisor maxwell: how long was it? >> about 60 minutes to 90 minutes. that was an in class overview. and how the transfers are done

and sore -- and so forth. interestingly, a few days later based on this training we were able to walk through and do a site visit of liquefied natural gas. we were on scene and saw how that occurred. something we had never done before. supervisor maxwell: supervisor mirkarimi and em supervisor mirkarimi:? supervisor mirkarimi: - -- supervisor mirkarimi? supervisor mirkarimi: we have catalogued a number of electoral incidences of outages, which is probably par for the course for many cities around the country. transformers that blew up, manhole covers that were skyrocketing through neighborhoods in downtown. if you could, give us a little bit of an impression on that reality.

the feedback that we get from constituents is not as rosy, potentially, as what you intimated. >> i do have one more slide to get through and then i can address your questions for mr. lee. he worked very closely on the issue of transformers and that issue itself. i do not want to make it sound rosy. the san francisco fire department and the city in general has a good and productive working relationship with pacific gas and electric, as evidenced by the request for training and of their responsiveness in this review panel. anything that we asked for talking with other cities in terms of a subpoena and so forth, we have a good working relationship. as fire chief i want to be clear

that i want them to be accountable. the department's experience is one that where there is an issue, it is addressed in a timely fashion. i think that mr. lee would be able to attest to that as well. supervisor mirkarimi: you did mention the electrical side, i will wait for mr. lee. >> thank you. continuing the time line, on october 27 i had the opportunity to meet with mr. vice and the investigation, he gave me an update in terms of where they were at. it was a work in progress where they thought anywhere between 10 months 18 months to come up with a reason. he did share with me that as the ntsb investigation progressed, they provided information periodically through the public accent docket.

we would be able to have that information. they indicated that when they completed that investigation, probable cause and recommendation to the board members during a public board meeting, i will participate in that sickly or spiritually. -- saidl6civically or spiritual. we are invited to attend and i will keep in touch for updates from ntsb. on november 10, the department of public works posted a town hall publication that provided an overview of the regulatory requirements for making and locating utilities prior to construction. much of the work that we do when we respond to gas leaks has to

do with private contractors and tapping into a line. and then you have a gas leak. there is an obligation on the part of the contractor to make sure that they properly marked and work with utility companies before they do their work. we thought this would be a good idea in terms of public works hosting this meeting to again emphasize the importance for contractors and their obligation that they have to properly address these issues before they start opening the ground. in the follow-up meeting on december 8 with pg&e was to discuss in present detail the issues related to shutdown procedures and whether or not pg&e is interested or inclined in having automatic or remote control shut off in the length of time that it took to shut down the line.

that concludes the update that we have to date. again, i am keenly interested in making sure that our citizens are kept safe. i applaud you for your interest and diligence in following up to see that pg&e is held accountable and that we are given the information needed to do our job as safely and efficiently. supervisor chiu: any additional follow up some supervisor mirkarimi:? has there been an -- any additional follow-up? supervisor mirkarimi: has there been any additional investigation? >> the testing was done on all lines in the city within 36 hours. we tested negative. supervisor mirkarimi: before that test, were any of those lines ever identified as high priority or high risk? >> not to my understanding, they

were not. they were not on that top 10 list. again, i am not the expert. i would respectfully request waiting for mr. johnson. supervisor mirkarimi: is there a system that exists so that there is a categorization of high risk, medium risk, no risk at all? is that information fluid with the city and county? >> yes, that has been provided as a part of the request supervisor mirkarimi:. -- request. supervisor mirkarimi: are we going to be able to follow through to say -- if we are talking gas, talking the entire infrastructure is fine as well, but if there was already an assessment or ranking saying that this is what needs

attention, does san francisco get that information at the same time? >> that is the request we have made. on the electrical side, like i said, i think we are more advanced in terms of our dialogue. we would like to engage and have the same process on the gas inside. my thought would be that on a quarterly basis a small group of us from the city continue to meet with pacific gas and electric for those kinds of updates. if it is a fluid process, going from a medium priority to a high priority, that is our interest. supervisor mirkarimi: who is in the driver's seat to determine, if there is a dire need for high priority need, however it is to be labeled, that something needs to be fixed? who in the city determines that

that is followed through on? is that the fire department? >> it is my responsibility, as well as the city administrator. we are doing this in conjunction with both departments. i have taken the lead from the gas perspective. mr. lee has done a lot of the electrical side. we are both committed to making sure that pg&e is held accountable and that we receive updates. something with shifting priorities gets addressed immediately. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you. supervisor chiu: let's invite the city administrator. i know that you have a presentation from your perspective. supervisor chu supervisor chu:? -- supervisor chu? supervisor chu: just a question for the chief about the information that has been provided regarding major

transmission lines that had been provided to the department along with city administrators understanding the potential risks. have we given much thought about the kinds of information given to the public? if it is located in residential areas, is that something we would want to make public? have we thought about that question belloc's -- question? >> i know that if a member of the public is within a certain radius of a transmission line, they would have the ability to work with pg&e along that line to get that information. the city has not specifically address the if we will be providing that information, but it is in our best interest to make the public aware that they have the ability to find out about certain utility infrastructure on their homes.

supervisor chu: similar to that, members of the board representing different districts, are there things that we should be made aware of? i would request that we be kept in the loop. >> no problem. supervisor chiu: mr. lee? >> good morning, supervisors. i wanted to let you know, pg&e has joined us. they have both the gas, electrical sides with us. i wanted to finish a portion of what i thought was very important for you to understand. as the chief and i have been deliberating, initial meetings deliberated for us the highest level or highest number of gas leaks and what they are caused by. they are caused by a contractor excavation in the city. we immediately went to a very

large town hall meeting as previously described by the chief last wednesday. there were some 50 contractors or agencies that attended. we will continue. that was just a first meeting. it served not only to have the underground service announcement agency, the u.s.a., as you see those markings along the street, for the public to understand these markings -- it is precisely to guide those contractors as permitted by the city, public and private, so that they are aware of those utilities and are sensitive to the utility's beneath the ground when it comes time to excavate. as the case may be, despite the best efforts and past practices, they always need to be updated in proof. the highest level of interruption has been gas leaks that result from excavation.

this can happen in many districts throughout the city. we have made it a high priority for that event to occur. we have periodically revisited with all of the contractors and staff from the public utilities commission, the port commission, any of the staffing people that do project management we have a very old city. if anything, we had a tremendous amount of utilities underground. there contractors are being contacted and we expect to have a larger audience for our next review. that is a huge amount of

education but also a huge effort underway to do adequate prevention in the area that we know will exist. having said that, specific to supervisor mirkarimi's question about the electric side of it, i have been heading a group where we look at the review with pg&e over the reliability of the electric system in the city. we have been working and meeting for about a year and a half. as i can say to you today, i can say the electoral system is both a sensitive and complicated system. we have both old and new equipment in our city. it takes us a long time to understand how that system works, how we can improve it, how we can prevent some of the

explosions that have occurred in the city. a year and a half ago we experienced several series of explosions in the city, most of which in the downtown corridor. as a result of that, we entered a study using outside experts as well as pg&e staff to inform us about these underground transformer networks that exist in our city. as a result of that, we focused on how they not only work, but how they were historic lee inspected by pg&e. one of the most serious lesson we learned was that their inspection were faulty. they simply did not work to prevent the kind of exposure that occurred on davis street downtown and on the more celebrated one on post and carney.

those explosions resulted in injury to public persons. as a result of the intense review that was done by pg&e staff, reviewed by outside experts who had informed us, we focused on why there was a mixture of water getting into the oil-based transformers. we have oil-based transformers that have been the most popular transformer networks in our city for years, decades. as a result of that study, we were literally able to work with pg&e to change the inspection process so that the visual inspection that occurred in the past are no longer the standard. we were actually able to get a new standard for our transformers. now they use an infrared transformer, alongside a six-

month taking of samples from the oil and studying whether or not that oil has been compromised. those two steps have transformed, if i may use that word, their inspection technologies and methodologies and we are getting about a 23% less of these explosions occurring. there have been no explosions since a year and a half ago since those very visible ones, no explosions of the particular nature. as i said, it is still a complicated system. as we have learned this past spring, we had another explosion in the tenderloin community, just about three blocks away from city hall. we discovered it was not the oil

being compromised in there, but thea dc cable that have failed n the transformer network. we met for months with pg&e staff and concluded those cables were too old for our city. direct current should not be in our city. therefore, we launched an effort with pg&e in an effort not only to replace them, but to replace the d.c. current cables in the city. that will take time and money but they are on the way to doing that. it is another one of those items, as a result of the cooperative information we are getting and review from outside experts, to tell us what has caused some of these explosions. we focused on the direct current cable system in our city. those are the cables that still run some of the elevators throughout the city.

some of the major hotels in the city. we looked at other cities. we got some reports about how they have been able to replace their d.c. cables and go to a non-d.c. cable system to power the city. we are also meeting with pg&e about the possibility that they completely remove oil-based transformers in the city. we believe there is new technology out there that is being tried from other cities. we are looking at that as well, trying to get the best practices from very large urban settings, old settings like los angeles, chicago, new york, and getting their history of transformer explosions. we will do the same thing with gas line explosions. and we will be working with the

puc and pga to determine what best practices would be. i wanted to provide you with a few of those highlights. we can produce a more adequate report that will cover the year and a half of meetings we have had. at the same time, i want to let you know these power outages resulting from electricity, we have kept a log, but down the road, we could probably use the services of 311 to map out a district by district chart of the outages, how often they occur, and what we have done about them. we have tried to isolate every outage we have had and have tried to see if they are related to a d.c. cable, that were compromise, some of the larger things we are focusing on to increase the reliability of the system but also provide a higher level of scrutiny and safety. with re