away on january 28 unfortunately and in the recent fire from last week you had mohammed chivy who was 38 years old a devoted husband and father of three who passed away over the weekend, and tragically we just learned that the mr. chivy's 13 year old daughter also passed away last night, and so we know that it's been horrible thing for these families. it's been devastating for them and it's been devastating for the community. i know with the latest fire that the family and the kids were very active with the mission

education project inc., mepi and dozens of kids were impacted by the fire s and the loss of life. i want to be very clear and i have been very clear every time something like this has happened that i am forever grateful to the men and women of the san francisco fire department for their bravery for putting their lives on the line and what i can tell you is that with each of one of the fires that i have seen it is very clear to me, but for the incredible heroic work of the men and women of the san francisco fire department we could have had many more deaths in these fires. these firefighters responded promptly and they truly saved lives and i think that we as a city should be very proud of what they do

and are very grateful for their courage and bravely. the tragedy behind these fires is not just in the horrific loss of life, but also the tragedy is in the displacement of dozen was residents -- dozens of residents and small businesses and their workers. >> >> the 22nd and mission fire was home to 53 residents, and to 27 businesses, and you can imagine that with each one of the businesses there are a number of employees that are impacted, and while i am very proud of the fact that we as a city were able to house all of the residents, the challenges that face these families are pretty significant and we know and are grateful to the work that has been done also with the

small businesses. the mayor's office of work force and economic development and the mission economic development agency me ta have been working closely with the small business owners and. employees to help them to figure out how they can move ahead of the fires. this hearing today is the beginning of a public discussion about the fires, and about what's happened, and i want to thank fire chief has just come into the building, and let me say that this is only the beginning. we plan to have a subsequent hearing where we will be discussing specific legislation that we will be introducing. this is legislation that is being drafted right now by the san francisco city attorney and i want to thank chief hayes white and director huey for working with my office in drafting the legislation, and the legislation is being put together for the purpose of

figuring out how we as a city can enhance the response and enhance the prevention, and let me say what we're thinking about as we're moving forward with that legislation. one thing that the legislation could possibly do is to allow housing inspectors to cite building owners when the know annual certification of fire and alarm systems is out of date. unfortunately now inspections happen but there is no ability to issue a citation when that is the case and we need to remedy that situation. our legislation is also looking at requiring apartment building owners to post signs informing residents of the right to file anonymous complaints, not only with the department of building inspection but using the 311 system. right now the process by which a tenant can file a complaint is more complicated

than it should be. many tenants may not know they can do that and one of the things we want to do and my office what we did with the single room occupancy hotels where we allow them to use the 311 system so instead of calling the right agency, the fire department or the department of building inspection all you need to do is call 311 and they will take the complaint and direct it to the right agency and something else we're considering is expanding the scope of fire investigations. right now the scope once there is a fire the score of the investigation is limited. we want the scope to go beyond the cause and the origin of the fire and look at whether or not there were violations of safety codes that actually lead to the fire itself. you might be surprised to learn that in the investigation that takes place

right now that is not a part of the investigation whether or not a code violation lead to the fire itself. we believe that something like that is a given that it should be part of the investigation and we're asking them to do that. i also want to acknowledge the work of supervisor kim who has also like most supervisors i think every supervisor has had a tragic fire in their district, and we are working with supervisor jane kim to support tenants and one of the things that i know supervisor kim is looking at the right of return the right of tenants to return to these buildings once the fire has taken place. supervisor kim is a cosponsor of this hearing and she will be looking at the idea of can the city do more to expedite the timeline for when these buildings are repaired? because one of the things that

we have seen if you can see at the fires that have taken place in many of the cases it takes a long time for these buildings to be repaired and by the time the repair happens the tenants have all left san francisco. they're no longer here, so we need to do more to address that. in any event we will be having a follow up hearing to discuss specific legislation but today is really about understanding what happened with the fires in the mission and city wide, and with that context i want to call first upon our fire department and again i want to thank chief hayes white and chief before you came i noted how in every single one of these fires i am just in awe of the incredible work of

the firefighters, of the men and women of your department who have saved lives and put their lives on the line. i want to thank you and your firefighters for what you have done, and on a more personal note let me say that i am always touched by the personal way in which you interact with these victims and you and i have had a number of conversations, and i know that you as well are deeply impacted when there is a loss of life, and so i want to thank you for that as well, and i want to thank you for your willingness to work with us to figure out how we can address this situation and do everything we can, not only to respond to a fire properly, but also to prevent them.

>> thank you. thank you good afternoon. members of the committee. supervisor campos i applaud you as well as all of the colleagues, particularly supervisor kim related to learning more about the fire problem that exists here in san francisco and how we go about responding to fires, but also an important piece is the public education piece which we look forward to working with you on and director huey, department of building inspection related possibly to legislation to avoid some of the tragedies that we have seen recently. under the recognize of mayor lee you should know that all city departments particularly around this agency and this issue, public safety are working very closely together, so i think it's obvious that fire and police work really well together but we're working collaboratively as we see our population rise and new building construction occurring with the department of building inspection as well as the department of planning. you're going to hear from two of our

captains today to answer some of the questions related to the recent fires in the mission but regarding overall fire trends, how we operate our bureau of fire prevention as well as our bureau of fire investigation. i have for you on the presentation the mission of the san francisco fire doesn't and protect lives and property in san francisco from fires and natural disaster incidents and incidents and prevent fires through prevention and education programs and to provide a work environment that values health, wellness and cultural diversity and free from harassment and discrimination. i thought on frame it for you we looked at the last three years of data we have, 2012, 13 and 14. this is a break down of our call distribution by district. district 1 through 11 and this is all calls so both fire and

emergency medical calls to the tune of 125,000 annual that we ran last year, and [inaudible] okay. so we have captain dekoaz on from the bureau of fire prevention but i will ask our other captain and talk about the role of bureau of fire investigation as it relates to fires here in san francisco. >> thank you chief and good afternoon supervisors. thanks for this opportunity to come by and answer any questions you might have, but first i would like to go over -- i don't believe this is set up on the screen but do you have a copy of the presentation? >> yes. >> okay. great. fire investigation basics i think there were some questions from i

believe your office supervisor campos, regarding what exactly the arson task force, the investigative unit does after the fires? and we strive to investigate every single fire in san francisco. for the most part we. do the argon task force doesn't get involved unless there is some question as to what caused the fire. then we come in. we have specialized -- we're a specialized unit. our investigators are trained in fire investigation. they're also peace officers. they work hand and hand with the police department as well, so if we discover after the investigation it is deliberately set fire, an arson fire, then the police department are already on hand and they start conducting their criminal investigation, so it is a joint effort in that regard, but all of the investigations start out the same. we don't

know what we're going to find. we don't make a previous position as to what caused the fire and we follow a basic scientific method and analytical process step by step. we gather evidence as we go along. we look at the least damages areas to the most damaged areas, and we're collecting evidence as we go along as i stated whether it be samples that we might think are excel rant any type of damage to furniture or appliances or electric cal components that give information to how the fire started. we're also interviewing witnesses, a resident, anyone that saw the fire, 911 callers. we go right down the list. that ultimately will help us determine the area of origin and that usually is

the most extensive area of fire damage and then we damage a heat source, the ignition source. we put all of that information together and we come up with a hypothesis. we try to prove the hypothesis. if we cannot we try to come up with another hypothesis and we keep eliminating them until we come up with the most likely cause for a fire and i say "most likely" because sometimes it's just that. it's most likely because there are other factors involved but our investigators are very good at what they do, and they have growing experience that will continue to grow, and we have been very proactive in increasing our staff as well so we can respond with more force and with more investigators as we continue this evolution in the arson task force as well.

the causes of fires -- really there are four conclusions we can come up with. a fire is caused by natural means, lightning for example, either accidental. someone was smoking, flicked the cigarette accidentally, electrical issue that was caused by over loading appliances and then there's incendiary, intentionally set fire. the next is not a cause. it's undetermined. the fire in the mission district that blg was so structurally damaged in the fire caused so much damage that that cause is undetermined. there was no conclusive evidence to say whether it was intentionally set or accidental, and sometimes that happens with a fire that burns that long,

that hot, and has that much damage, so we try to get a conclusion to get closure. our job is to let the facts tell us what the conclusion is. we don't let any bias get in the way. we start off every investigation with that in mind. there was some questions i believe that your office had. i have i think addressed a lot of the questions but one thing i think you were interested in knowing about is whether or not district 9 for example -- that's your district, but how it compared with the other districts in san francisco? and one of those pages towards the back there's a chart that it's titled "working fires and greater alarm fires" and that chart will show you back to 2004 to present the number of fires

each year, and really if you look at at this time fires have decreased over that time period. the national trend is a decrease as well by 20% and i think this trend if you look at it from 2004 to present it's almost cut in half, but greater alarm fires such as the one on the 26 hundred block, the 22nd and mission street fire and unfortunately had a fatality and at 24th and tweet. those fires are terrible especially when there is a death or a injury and those fires bring to light the need for fire prevention, the need for fire investigations that can hopefully find a cause which can lead to better fire prevention, and ultimately that's our goal. it may appear

that there are more fires in part because occasionally we have spikes in vehicle fires that are intentionally set. portable toilet fires with all of the construction in san francisco. we have quite a few out there for requirements for the construction so we get a lot of portable toilet fires. those are intentional and when we have a large building fire most people think it's an arson fire but in fact the three fires they just mentioned two are most likely electrical and accidental in nature and the one at 2600 block of mission street actually is undetermined at this point. >> can i ask you which one -- what's the cross street on the 2601? >> 2632. that is i believe. >>

>> 20th or 21st street. the big house fire. >> is that the 22nd and mission one -- >> no. 22nd and mission the address is 3 22nd street and mission and the other fire was midblock. >> in terms of that fire is there a conclusion to the cause of the fire was? >> that particular fire -- all three of the fires are under investigation but one thing i can tell you because i wanted to give you more than the standard answer at this point. we're certain that that conspiracy nature for that fire or cause doesn't exist at this point. we are waiting for evidence to get back from the lab to support that statement, so but at this

time we did find evidence of electrical cause for that fire. the only thing that we're really waiting for at this point is evidence to come back from the crime lab to help us make that conclusion with authority. the fire most recently at 24th and tweet is really too early to talk about and we will be able to talk more about that in the coming weeks. >> if i may just follow up? maybe chief if it's appropriate if i have questions specific to this issue ask the captain now. one of the things that we keep hearing and you know in the mission is we're in the middle of this housing crisis given the location of some of these fires and prime real estate. there are a number of theories including some conspiracy theories about possible arson. can you talk about the extent

to which that issue is a consideration in your investigation? and you indicated with the fire at 2632 mission that you couldn't rule out argon at this point so if you can address that issue because i think there are many people in this neighborhood and i get it every time someone raises an issue about these fires it's suspicious that so many are happening in the mission right now. >> sure. but to be clear about 2632 mission you're correct we cannot rule out arson or accidental. we don't know which way to go because there is no evidence to support accidental or arson so we're not saying we're leaning one way or the other but we don't know because evidence that could have helped us was totally consumed in the fire just to make that clear so that's why we have an undetermined option 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