you say this is not shelters with homeless population or people might just slip in, right? >> i want to reframe your question to make sure i understand. the question is, if we open a shelter, will it also include members of -- >> mr. madrid: no. my question was, i just want to make sure that when the shelter is open, or opened up, it's not homeless shelters. it's just specifically for those people that need to be in there, right? >> when a shelter is opened in san francisco, our intention is

to serve the needs of the individuals that are coming to the shelter. we recognize that some individuals may have particular needs. there are many resources available for individuals who may already be homeless. they may already go and use -- or go to the locations where they're already familiar, but they may come to any shelter in the city, if they need assistance. >> mr. madrid: the reason i ask is that as you mentioned before, those places are accessible, but we had a meeting a couple of months ago that most shelters are not accessible. just wondering information on that and possibly recheck your plan. and the second question is that

for your outreach, it has the ability -- and i haven't got any notices that i can sign up for this resources that you were informing us. how do you reach out to those people who might or might not know? >> i didn't mean to interrupt. i was just going to say in answer to that question, which is an important one, it is again our great dem colleagues that do our alert systems. very important first step that all people in san francisco can do. and if you feel like you're overmessaged, you can sign up just for your zip code. that is an important first step.

>> mr. madrid: i didn't get any information. that's what i was saying. >> so if you don't know about it, how do you know what you don't know? the second, there are barriers to getting into the pg&e medically dependent program. many people don't even know about it. their providers may not know about it. it is an opt-in program, so it's another way which we want the message to get out, including important forums like this, that these are available. the third reason and the reason i sort of stepped in, we have found in investigating the empower database that people don't know they're in it. it is pulled from their medicare medical records. it's tightly controlled by the federal government. including whether they think it's a significant enough emergency to release it, because it is hippa level information. so when we had the geary fire and we were worried about the

power shutdown in that neighborhood and how long it would go on, we were told by the federal government that was not a significant or long enough disaster for us to get those names. and i believe that was true. and it was a reasonable control. i mention that because, if you're in the empower database, it's because you have a medically qualifying need and you're on medicare. it does not, however, include peoples' phone numbers. so we will and are creating a robust approach to contacting people who do not know their name may be asked for by the city in an extreme emergency. so you can't actually ask to be in the empower database. >> mr. madrid: thank you. >> i hope that answers your question. >> mr. madrid: it does. thank you. >> ms. sassouni: hi. i'll try to keep this brief.

just a few things. i just received an alert through the system about the outage this morning, so that was good. i use alert sf, but also for my son's school and other things. next door, all of these neighborhood-wide events i try to sign up for all of these alerts. as much information as possible. and these are very general. but in terms of access, i don't know. for me as a deaf person, i do feel like we're responsible to prepare ourselves in advance by having extra batteries at home and things that may last a minimum of 72 hours, so if the power does go out and we're not able to access the news and so on, we may -- or if the gas goes off and we don't have enough food, so planning for the earthquake preparedness activities, can be part of

preparing for a power outage. i think it's also a good lesson for everyone, but in terms of the access part, not sure. i mean the community outreach and partnering with different organizations is going to be so important. some deaf people don't bother to reach out because we're so used to being on our own and taking care of ourselves in those regard. and deaf people may sleep through audible fire alarms. others are barely alerted to their own house on fire, and barely able to get their three children in the car. rental landlords often don't provide ada accessible alerts, even though they're required under law. and there can be alert animals, but that's not always a flawless system as well. i think there are so many things that we can do to prepare

ourselves, but i think having the battery backup is really significant. and again, not sure if people can carry it, what is convenient for people? so just another approach i encourage you to consider. >> thank you, council member. i appreciate the comment. one thing about public safety power shoutoff and prepare willing -- shutoff and preparing for that, if we have a large earthquake, there will be a public outage with everything else, with debris, with many other issues. so the efforts that people are going through to prepare themselves for public safety power shutoff are the same things they need to do for any type of disaster. i mentioned earlier we had 22,000 people without power earlier today. we could have many more in a public safety power shutoff. if something happens to the

phone pole in front of your house, like it did mine, five residences were without power for five hours. that was tough. i had my dog inside. my spouse who works from home. and i had a refrigerator that was off. i've taken steps where she now knows how to turn on the generator and get it going, much to my chagrin as i keep drilling to her do so, but this is how we prepare for an incident that happens to us. but it was small. it was only five. so whether it's five, 500, 5,000 or more, the same steps we're taking are what help us prepare. >> ms. senhaux (chair): thank you. three more council questions to go. thank you for waiting. >> ms. pelzman: thank you for your comprehensive approach to this. it makes me feel a little bit better about what is going to --

what we could anticipate happening in both the disaster and also in turning off the power. i'm going to follow up again on outreach. especially as it relates to pg&e as a renter, i don't have a pg&e bill. and i'm not sure how you all have incorporated renters or folks like myself who don't pay the utility into your calculus of how to get inform us. as somebody who has done a lot of outreach in the past, i would encourage you to report back to us to let us know how you are going to be expanding both the method and person to person outreach if that's what it takes. [please stand by] [please stand by]