tion in fires such as that. with respect to your description of conspiracy assumptions being made because of property values and all of that. we don't let that get into our investigation whatsoever. we cannot. we have to start our investigation with an open mind with no bias whatsoever. if we don't then we start going down the path of trying to prove a bias rather than trying to let the facts of the investigation, the evidence before us, tell us what the answer is, so we don't let that get into our investigation whatsoever, but let me assure you if we find anything at all that would tend to make us believe that this was intentionally set we investigate that very vigorously. we do not look at that and glance over it. it's very vigorously looked at.

we send many samples to the lab whether it's samples because we think it's excel rant. we rule that out and don't guess so we let the scientific evidence and analysis tell us the answers we're looking at. >> besides the scientific analysis of the fire itself are there other factors that you consider in determining whether or not arson was involved? >> exactly. again witness interviews for example. we can get a wealth of information talking with tenants, talking with owners. we talked to the insurance companies. we talk with neighbors. this is a full fledged investigation where witness testimony, witness information is just as important as the physical evidence, as the scientific evidence so no it's

very important that you understand that we look at all of those, and quite often just one phone call we get, one interview, one personal interview will lead us to yet someone else to talk to and many of our investigations have lead to conclusions based on witness testimony alone, and one case in recent months a confidential informant came forward so no we look at all aspects of the investigation to help us to come to that conclusion. >> captain in terms of -- i know the focus of a fire of your investigation is on the origin of the fire and the cause of the fire. to what extent do you consider whether or not there was compliance with code requirements in your investigation? >> actually i am glad you mentioned that. i wrote down a note when you mentioned that looking at code violations is not part of our violation. actually it is.

>> it is? >> to this extent and i think you're referring to it doesn't play a role in the arson investigation but we have a established procedure where our arson investigators they're looking at everything. when they see a blocked exit door. when they see any type of perceived electrical violation we call dbi. they have a 24 hour hot line and they're quick to show up whenever we have those questions. i personally called the electrical inspection division on more than one occasion asking them to send a senior electrical inspector because we saw what we thought was an illegal electrical hook up for example. with fire prevention we have a form that we fill out. any and all code violations that we observe we send over to fire prevention and they put it in queue and send a inspector out there from the fire department to follow up so

there is a process there. what we as arson investigators don't do act on that personally because that's not our job but it is our job to pass that information along whether to dbi or to the fireprevention inspectors so i wanted to assure you it's not ignored. >> one of the things that has been reported with the fire at 24th and tweet captain is that there were two individuals that were locked in a liquor store in sort of a space. can you talk a little bit about what we know on that? >> actually i can. my understanding is these two individuals were sleeping in the liquor store with permission from the owner. they were not held captive. yes, i believe they were locked in because a padlock was used on the gate. that is not code compliant. the building does not allow the permit -- the permitting did not

allow that space to be used for habitation and i am sure the building department never approved it for habitation. it's a liquor store but the fact is they were using it on that occasion to sleep and to my understanding they were aware that the gate was locked behind them because of the fire whether they lost the key that they had, whether someone was supposed to let them out in the morning? i don't know. the two individuals left the scene as soon as they were released from the liquor store. >> you mean by released you mean they had to break the lock, the firefighters? >> yeah, the fire department was there and i believe there were two padlocks on the gate actually. >> okay thank you. >> so if there aren't any other questions feel free to give me office a call, the fire department a call and happy to follow up with anything you have. >> i want to let the chief continue with her presentation. >> thank you. >> thank you captain. thank

you supervisor campos. now i would like to ask and introduce to you captain danial dekoazo to talk about the role of fire prevention. >> thank you chief. thank you. good afternoon. thanks for having me. >> speak into the mic please. >> yes. i would like to speak briefly on the role the briewro plays and the mission and protect property and lives in san francisco. the bureau's role is enforce laws and regulations as they pertain to public safety and provide education. the laws we enforce california health and safety code which in that code it establishes the california state fire marshal's office and also in the code grants authority to the chief, the department to enforce the state regulations for public safety. that's the

fire marshal -- state fire marshal develops. also we're a part of title 24 parts two and nine. two is the building code and nine is the fire code and enforcing those life safety aspects through occupancies under our jurisdiction. they're specified occupancies, not across the board occupancies. they're assembly high rise buildings and et cetera and specified occupancies that fall under our jurisdiction. the bureau is broken up into different sections. we have a [inaudible] section that's stationed up on mission street next to the building department and they do our plan review for new construction. we have districts broken up into 10 and have district inspectors. the districts they inspect all new

construction. they have the responsibility for complaint inspections within their district and they also conduct referral inspections so for fire clearance if the health department or another agency is requesting clearance in the district that is their role -- >> if you could speak into the mic so people can -- >> i'm sorry. high rise and getting back to the health and safety code we're mandated to inspect every high rise and we have a division and inspectors assigned to that section and 525 high rises in san francisco and we inspect them annually and then we have the port of san francisco. we have a captain of the port and inspector assigned to the port and that is more or less a one stop shop for the port. they do everything in relation to the port whether plan review, permits, inspections. they do it all for the port. likewise the sfia, the airport same thing. we

have a captain and a lieutenant inspectors down there and they handle all inspections, plan review, et cetera for the airport. schools have to be inspected annually. we have a inspector there. residential care facilities every two years and public education. we have sro's single room occupancies where the owner can request the fire department come down and give safety talks and which we do on a regular basis. our r1 and r2 programs the inspections are conducted by our engine companies. we have approximately 3800 r1 and r2 inspections annually. to date we have completed about 700 and their role is determine the level of fire life safety in the department of building inspection. if they see an. >> >>

>> issue that needs attention they call us directly and a that is a sprinkler or system that is down or alarm or exiting and not only do they put it into the report and into the system and flagged and routed directly to the district it's under they also call us and we would send an inspector out immediately on something like that. so our current initiative -- the question came up what are we doing to promote greater safety or fire prevention out there for the people of san francisco? we are currently working with supervisor kim's office to examine the possibility of retroactiving three -- retrofitting apartment buildings for sprinkler installation. it is that's currently being reviewed. it's worth voting

with sprinklers statistics show over the last 10 years residential facilities that had a sprinkler system for residential there hasn't been one reported fire death to a resident nor a firefighter, responding firefighter over 12 years and it's something to look into and we're actively doing that. in addition we're looking at ways to communicate better with the public and the people that we serve. we're trying to mimic what the building department does where you can go online look up your residence, where you live, and look up if there is any complaints or pending inspections et cetera and if you have concerns you can call. they can call us directly on that. in addition the fire department is working with the american red cross. they have reached out to us and we're happy to work with them identifying high risk areas and the goal there is to provide

and install smoke alarms to needy residents, and the new smoke alarms starting this july and with the california fire marshal need to have 10 year battery lives in them so that's a new provision that's out there, and it's worth noting that 2/3 of all fire deaths that cause -- that have occurred that where residents had smoke alarms 2/3 were due to they were disabled or they didn't have them either, 2/3, and the reason they're disabled is nuisance alarms or sometimes the battery fails so this is a step in the right direction and we're going to work with them on that. and other current initiatives we're working on, things to consider,

just throwing them out there and let you know we're kind of trying to think outside the box a little bit here. the building department has a self certification program for building owners so if you pull a permit -- i don't want to speak for the department, but if you pull a construction permit for a thousand dollar or greater you have to self certify that all of the units have smoke a alarms. we're looking to enacting a requirement where on an annual basis the owners of the apartments have to go through and certify every one of their units has a smoke alarm and the thing to take note they're different from smoke detectors. they're stand alone units. they can be strung together but they don't have a control unit like a fire alarm would be so they're inside the individual units themselves and the fire department's role when we do an inspection for this is the base areas and look in the lobby,

the garage and common use areas, the exiting et cetera. this stops at the entrance to the unit. unless it's a brand-new unit we don't get vision inside the unit. of course if there is a complaint we would and we would reach out. also we're thinking about possibly extending the sro program for education to the r2 units so building owner could reach out to us and we will come and provide talks, safety talks for any of the residents that are concerned for r 2.. currently we have that program for sros. and lastly i would like to talk about -- it's interesting because i know we had issues with fire escapes recently. the fire code and i

know the building department looks at them the fire code did not adopt the provision in chapter 11 for maintenance and existing buildings and good operation of fire escapes. i suggest that we look into that and add a provision that they're testing annually that the ladders are operated and dropped annually and have a way to certify them on an annual basis. >> thank you captain. i have a question just generally about fire prevention. >> yes. >> my understanding is there are three different agencies involved. you have the fire department, the department of building inspection, the health department. in terms of the inspections what's the difference between what you and the fire department does and what the other departments do? >> so for the building department the fire department has jurisdiction over r2 and r1 occupancies so that is meaning more than two units so if you

have a single family dwelling or two or fewer that's building department and not fire department. the fire department may look at it for sauce but it's not our jurisdiction. >> >> as soon as you hit three units or greater it false under fire department's jurisdiction and we look at base building for that. the individual units and inside the door and that's the building department inspections. the health department -- they don't enforce fire code. we're enforcing fire and building code. it's worth noting that the building code because there was talk that the building didn't have sprinklers or a fire alarm what have you. many of our buildings were built when these systems were not required so they're conforming at the time but not today, so that's why we're looking into retroactive. >> how many inspectors do you have in the fire department in

terms of looking at these buildings that you're responsible for? >> so i would say that we have -- again i'm going to give you an estimate. close to 40, 37 if i am not mistaken but they're all broken down in different districts and have different roles. we have high rise inspectors and that's a full time job and walk the entire building, every floor, et cetera, so again they have different roles. fire permits. that is a fire code -- they enforce the fire code for operation and maintenance so if you need to pull an annual permit for let's say hazardous materials storage, fuel storage, open flame, assembly you would go to permits and not the districts or submit a plan through mission street [inaudible] >> finally how often are these buildings inspected by the fire department? >> so again that depends. it

depends what the use is. if it's residential care every two years. if it's a school every year. if it's a high rise every year. and again it's triggered by inspection requests when you pull a permit, so it depends on the volume of the construction out there. otherwise if we get complaints, again referrals from other agencies so it's not se. there are certain use where it's set and we go out annually but otherwise it's as the request comes in. >> is there a place that you report all of the inspections you did? >> correct. we have a data base where the inspectors log the findings into that base where it's visible to any of the inspectors or to anyone within our department or if the public comes in we can share that information. >> thank you. chief i want to turn it back to you. >> thank you captain. and on that final point one thing we believe we can do a better job

on is access and transparency and modeling what dbi does and it's a technology piece and we worked with the department of technology and engaged them. if someone calls for the building history we can provide that but there is no way they can go online to do that. that pretty much concludes our presentation. i know a few things and you have been very good supervisor campos as your colleagues related to fire and life safety issues and coming up with different ideas and we know there's a delicate balance between the tenants and the owners but we believe there are solutions -- actually one of the aids for supervisor tang and i had a conversation -- somers and she's a tenant and she brought up a great idea in the leasing process when you're about to lease an apartment to be able to require the owner perhaps to provide what the exit plan is that when you're

signing on that the extinguishers and the smoke detectors and as the captain said we can't look at the individual units but in the lease process the owner and the tenant could have have a sign off related to that and i think collectively we can talk a little more about public education. we know now -- i was talking to one of the investigators the other day there are older buildings in the city. we have a huge stock of buildings that are wooden buildings and with our windy conditions and the topography of the city there is a fire problem existing in the city but a building done in the 30's or 40's and one electrical outlet in the living room and i'm a mom of three and each of the boys has computes and the need for electricity is greater than years ago so we need to make sure that with power strips and so forth we're mindful of that so there are reminders that i

think we need to continue to get out there as well as the importance of smoke detectors. i know you had questions. i believe we answered all of them. there was one we didn't address yet and had to do the fire at 24th and tweet and with the ambulance response time. did you want to do that? >> yes. >> i will ask our staff to answer that. >> chief if i may frame the question that came up to my office at least some media reports have indicated that it took as long as 13 minutes for the first ambulance to arrive at the scene of the 24th street and tweet fire, and i wanted to know whether or not that was true and we know in terms of response time 13 minutes how does that compare to what is a best

practice? i am wondering chief if you can discuss that. >> good afternoon supervisor. good afternoon everyone. yeah, it is correct it was 13 minutes to give a pers of that day, a snapshot of that day. we had 11 units in the system and transport and ambulances both public and private. at the time of the day on average we average five calls a day. at the time there were 14 active calls so when the fire came in right around 430, 52 seconds it was dispatched. they got it out quick and did a great job. the first engine got there within three minutes. they had to find the ambulances so they did find them in six minutes and once they did the first ambulance got there in six minutes from that point of dispatch. the next one in four minutes from that point of dispatch and six minutes and

a fourth one then came the first imagine on scene was critical. the dispatch getting the engine there was critical to the survival of some of the occupants. i know you went to the building supervisor. you saw it. the front window over the front door was the bedroom. the first engine on scene recognized there was heavy black smoke from the window. the fire was in the corner of the living room. it was pressurized smoke and coming out of the whole window. they saw a head popping in and out. normally the operations would lead a hose line to the fire. they knew they needed an immediate rescue and possibly others in the building so they took a ladder off and put it up to that window. i would like to commend the 13 year old boy who say hero and saved his brother to the first firefighter and got the second boy after that. rescue

squad two was on screen shortly after and rushed up the stairs without the benefit a hose line and found an occupant at the top of the stairs and brought her down. this happened before the ambulances got there. they went back up the stairs further into the hallway and found another occupant. they couldn't get out the front door because the fire and heat were puck be them out and went out the backstairs. the second question you asked once the ambulances arrived -- before they arrived there was intervention done to the occupants that needed before they got there in front of the building. >> my understanding chief is that it took about three minutes for the firefighters to respond which it's great, great response, but i think the concern that i have and that many people have raised is that it took 10 minutes after that

initial response from the firefighters for an ambulance to get there. >> absolutely. >> and what is the ideal response time of an ambulance for us in san francisco? >> so we are required by the state -- we're trying to strive for the goat and 90% percentile under 10 minutes. right now we get under 10 minutes 82% of the time. >> can we talk a little bit -- go ahead sorry. >> from point of dispatch to get the code three transport unit to the scene, so again that day there was a surge in the system. there were 14 active call it is. we had 11 units in the system, both public and private that were on calls, so dispatch did the right thing. from point of dispatch we were at level zero so what they did is send the units that they can to the fire and what the units did they did a fabulous job. they got the victims out of the

building which increases the likelihood of their survivability. >> so why 10 minutes? can you talk why the 10 minute requirement is there? >> that's a standard they have given us, the state. >> can you talk about what happens if the response is later than 10 minutes? what is the reason you're trying to -- >> if it's over 10 minutes is because the call volume is exceeding the supply of ambulances -- >> no, no, in terms of best practice in terms of saving a life why is the 10 minute mark important? >> well six minute mark is important in cpr to get oxygen to the brain so the first arriving units can do that and usually get there within six to seven minutes. in this case they got there in three. >> that's not my question. why is the 10 minute mark in terms of the state important? >> because we have an

emergency operations agreement with the state and that's what they're mandateing. >> chief -- >> i am trying to get there. >> maybe the chief -- >> i think the point is two fold. the sooner you can have a resource on the scene the better. to chief gonzalez's point it's important to have someone that has basic life support skills on scene as soon as possible. the 10 minute is a threshold designated for us by the ems agency that frankly right now is a challenge to reach from our perspective as well as the private providers. hopefully with new personnel coming on we will get back to that but with a growing population and with just trying to get around the city these days it makes it challenging. the importance again is to get on the scene. as described there were dramatic rescues made and one thing to note and i didn't realize until i saw it today there may have been this

perception that the members were holding out and waiting. there were work done in terms of medical intervention to these patients so much so while that was done when the ambulances got on scene the first three were on scene for 10 minutes and 18 and 111 so sometimes it's not. >> >> >> you get the initial thought and go to the help. that's not always the case. cardio pulmonary recustation was performed on three patients and takes time to rescue the patients and on scene working on the patient it takes time to prepare for transport so that you can safely get from point a to point b so it wasn't as if -- and the noted it today the ambulances got on screen and left within a few minutes want there was a delay that the ambulance was on scene to stabilize the patient prior to transport. >> just a another question

chief. how many ambulances came to the last fire? do you know the times? i know the one was 13 minutes and the other times were? >> we have that for you. i have it in a folder. i believe we have four ambulances total that responded and so again you're referencing 13 minutes from the time the dispatch went out. i believe it was probably they all arrived within two, three minute time frame. >> thank you. >> great. thank you very much again chief. thank you to your deputy and to the captains who presented. now i would like to ask director huey for their presentation and i want to begin by again thanking the director for the very open proactive way in which you responded and worked with my office. i also read by the way that more

recently your department started working with the city attorney to expedite a couple of cases of landlords that are non compliant and we work with dbi very closely, and know that they're so many good people on staff trying to do the best job they can, so with they will turn it over to you director and thank you again. >> good afternoon chairman, supervisor mar and supervisor campos and supervisor christensen. my name is tom [inaudible] department of building inspection. it's my honor to give our presentation today. first of all san francisco is a dense populated city. there's lots of fire probably you