>> i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> this is a reminder to silence all electronic devices. fire commission regular meeting october 23, 2019. and the time is 5:03. item 1 roll call. [roll call]

item 2 general public comment. members of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes on any matter within the commission's jurisdiction and not appear on the agenda. speakers shall address their remarks to the commission and as a whole and not to individual commissioners or department personnel. commissioners are not to enter into debate or discussion with a speaker. the lack of a response by the commissioners or department personnel does not necessarily constitute agreement with or support of statements made during public comment. >> if there's any member of the public that wishes to make public comment, please approach the podium. is there any member of the public that wishes to give public comment at this time? seeing none public comment is closed. madame secretary.

>> item 4 i'm sorry item 3 approval of the minutes. discussion and possible action to approve the meeting minutes of october 9 2019. >> thank you very much. is there any public comment at this time on item 3, approval of the minutes. please approach the podium. if not public comment is closed. commissioners. >> i move to approve, mr. president. >> second. >> so moved by commissioner cleveland, seconded by vice president covington. call for the question, all in favor say aye. >> aye. >> thank you very much. madame secretary. >> item 4 certificate of appreciation presentation. san francisco fire department to present certificate of appreciation to dino medardo rosso for donating time to teach spanish to san francisco fire

department to enable our first responders to continue to carry out the department's mission of serving all san franciscans and waldorf school for donating classroom space to that members of the sffd can learn spanish, thereby enabling our first responders to continue to carry out the department's mission of serving all san franciscans. >> thank you president, vice president and commissioners. chief of department nicholson. if i could have dino could you come up to the podium for us? is there a someone from the waldorf school? a representative? just come on up to the podium. i just want to say thank you so much. we appreciate your time, we appreciate your space. and in helping us be better at our jobs and be able to

serve everyone in this city. and so i'm going to come down there and give you certificates of appreciation to both of you. and if either of you would like to speak, we can do that, and if we want to take a picture, we'll do that. so again, thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you so much. >> what's your name? >> andrea. >> pleasure to meet you. [off mic] >> thank you for having us here. i

wanted to thank los bombeross for sponsoring me. i wanted to thank my colleagues at waldorf where we teach spanish, they gave us a classroom over the summer. i would like to thank ingleside for offering us space to teach our classes. i would like to thank lieutenant baxter for being the champion for this program. we met a few years ago and he was trying to accomplish the same goal. i ran into him, and we just sort of -- he helped me make this happen. he's been instrumental in this whole process. there are already some really great language tools that first responders use when connecting with the community. one of which is there are hand held devices you can plug into

arabic or cannot cantonese there are interpreters there are trainings. so this is an additional that first responders have in their tool belts to be able to give a one on one direct assessment. i think it's important that have that personal connection. an interesting number here is that 13 percent of households in san francisco are non-english speaking. it is a fairly high number. 21 percent of those are spanish only. so i would like to again just really thank all of these first responders, firefighters, cops emts, emergency personnel, they have volunteered their time to come and learn with me. this is not something that they were obliged to do. this is something that they thought was necessary in order to do their jobs better. they came to it. i wanted to talk a little bit about

the progress of the students. i wanted to mention that beyond just learning simple phrases they've learned how to actually engage and conjugate verbs and have meaningful conversations with people they are finding on a regular basis in general. the last point i want to make is that this really does have a positive kind of bearing on the way that we are perceived by the community, by "we,"i mean you. i think it improved community relations when first responders are making a concerted effort to reach out to those that they serve by learning a language which as an adult is really hard to do. so i really commend everyone that's involved in this process. so is there anything that you would like to say? she is my colleague. she also works with me on this program. >> it's great to have meaningful

collaboration between school and between the city and also that may we continue to build bridges not only with each other but all the members of the community. >> can we do a photo? >> sure, yeah. why not? [applause] >> come on up here. >> sure. [off mic] >> thank you. [off mic]

>> thank you so much. really great to meet you. great job. thank you so much. commissioners are going to -- thank you. >> a pleasure. >> so i just stand here? >> absolutely. >> mr. rosso? >> yes sir. >> first of all as an order of business i'm going to ask for public comment and then the commissioners will comment as well. is there any

members of the public that wish to give comment on this item? seeing none public comment is closed. commissioners. commissioner cleveland. >> thank you, mr. president. and thank you for being here and thank you for what you are doing. when i became a commissioner on the fire commission, one of the things that i thought was super important was the people we bring into our department be multilingual that we have as many languages spoken in the department as are represented on our streets. and having this program, you know, for people who are already in the department, already on the streets working every day is so critically important. so i just wanted to say muchas gracias. >> [speaking spanish] >> we appreciate the work you are doing to help our department be more culturally relevant and competent

on the street. mr. baxter has done a great job getting the word out about fire prevention and it's been a breath of fresh air to have that kind of exposure to the city. so thank you and keep up the good work. >> [speaking spanish]. >> thank you very much. very, very nice of you to do this. and the waldorf school, when i was on the board of the foundation the waldorf school was at fort mason and this kind of involvement is very much in line with the waldorf philosophy. so i'm not surprised that the classes were held at the waldorf school. it's very very good to see this collaboration. and of course i echo everything that my fellow commissioner

cleveland just said. for a while i toyed with the idea of going to those classes, because i -- but you know, we do fight fires. thank goodness for the city that we don't fight fires. it's such a wonderful thing to have people in their off time go to something that can help the citizenry even more. it really points to how giving the members of our department are. and it's very nice to see you highlighted. so thank you. >> thank you very much, vice president covington. commissioner hardeman. >> yes. since you are not officers, i can call you by your first name. thank you for what you do. great words of wisdom. i think you make a few bucks on the side if you can find a russian

orthodox. >> russian orthodox priest. >> sure. very kind of you to do that. terrific. i didn't know it was even happening. so that's terrific. we should probably. >> spread the word. >> not only to find somebody close by that would do it in chinese, not you particularly but that's a great thing you are doing. >> absolutely. >> if i can also just reiterate again our thanks to you. and i also want to give a shoutout to captain jack hart from ingleside pd who also gave us space. to thank you very much, captain. we appreciate you. [applause] >> thank you very much. i also wanted to echo some comments. this is one of the more beautiful exciting, happy occasions being a commissioner with

this department. it's not unusual because the department and city and county with its citizens and its public, we have also long strived to have relationships. it's not very often these kind of relationships happen with this kind of activity. part of this longevity that i have was part of the consent agreement and part of that was representation of diverse members of our community in the fire department. equally in terms of that, with the percentage of members of our public that don't speak english as their first language i've learned over the years that if you are in trouble or need some help, it's reassuring when you can hear a firefighter or fire woman or paramedic or person of our department come to you and have some language familiar if i, just to kind of engage and feel some comfort zone. i'm quite proud of this whole program. i appreciate

lieutenant baxter, thank you so much for the police department and the support that you have within that. in terms of the remarks by vice president covington, i too was thinking at one point of showing up for some classroom activities only because for so long, and i get so tired of saying this that i want to learn spanish as well, only because our members of our community everywhere i go, members of the spanish-speaking. so for me to be able to engage a little bit beyond, you know [speaking spanish] something to have some relationship, it's just really important. and i am very happy that waldorf is part of this as well. just thank you so much for your dedication and for this work. and good things will occur from this. and thank you for the start of that. i appreciate it. [applause]

>> any comments? >> no, just thank you to all of you and thanks to the fire department and police department for working together to make this kind of happen. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. gracias. >> such an honor to be here on behalf of waldorf. thank you. >> thank you very much. madame secretary. >> item 5 chief of department's report. report from chief of department jeanine nicholson on current issues, activities and events within the department since fire commission meeting on october 9, 2019 including budget, academies special events communication and outreach to other government agencies and the public. >> thank you very much, madame secretary. good evening chief nicholson. >> good evening again. thank you president nakajo, vice president covington, commissioners good to have

you here. i'll start off with our academy. i know chief velo is giving his report, he'll give you more detail. but we did start the members of station 49 in our suppression academy this week. so we are going full bore now. and you will get further information from chief velo. on the 11th, myself and several of my staff, including chief tom met with the san francisco general hospital foundation. and we went through pes psych emergency services and talked to them about how we work together and sort of what their capacity is and how we can work better together. and we talked also about all sorts of people that we bring that don't necessarily need a hospital, an emergency room

and sort of how can we collaborate on that and do ems prevention. i know they are already doing things at san francisco general hospital. they have a couple folks at tree i can't imagine that work --triage and they will divert them because they don't necessarily need to be in the er. so i'm looking forward to working with them in the future, whether it's community paramedicine or what have you. on the 15th i had a meeting with the doctor about community paramedicine and seeing what we can do there as well as our policy and procedures. on the 15th we also met with local 798 to discuss all sorts of issues. and ems was definitely one of the top ones. and we followed that on the 21st with an ems labor management meeting. and we are

collaborateing on all sorts of things ems related. and it's a good, productive relationship. i also went to a community health needs assessment breakfast the other day with chief tong and heard from dph and some other folks and met with afterwards with dr. bennett who is the director of interdivisional opportunities. so we are really looking for ways to collaborate, whether with dph or hospitals, in terms of what we can do to impact not just call volume but people's lives on the street. i went to on the 16th, mayor breed and i both attended the welcome kickoff for the international association of firefighters human relations committee

conference. we both spoke that morning. we went -- we had the great shakeout at rosa parks school and thank you for attending vice president covington. and then the preed events on the 17th. thank you to president nakajo and vice president covington for attending the pier event that was held up in marina green. it was a treat to have jerry shannon there who is a retired firefighter who was really -- made a huge impact with his work during and after loma prieta. on the 19th we had the 30-year nert drill anniversary. as we know, nert came out of the loma prieta earthquake. it was founded after that, because they wanted to do something.

we had a meeting with the stress unit yesterday. myself and chief velo and our chief of health and safety, chief parks. we met with them. and we were discussing how to streamline communications from within and to us as well as data that we want them to collect in terms of seeing how many people were actually working with and sort of what our resources look like in relation to that. tomorrow is the ann rush foundation burn relay. it will be coming to the division of training at 19th and folsom around 4:45 tomorrow afternoon, you are all invited. the black firefighters association will be cooking dinner

for everyone. this is the peninsula relay. so they started down the peninsula. i'm not sure if it was at menlo park but they've gone through there and their last journey is tomorrow up to us. and if you don't know, ann rush was a child who was severely burned in 1970 and died from a backyard barbecue accident. and we had many of our members involved with the alyssa ann rush foundation. we are mother created it as a way to educate folks about burns, stop drop and roll came out of that. and they also assist people who have folks who have family members that are burned. we have a meeting with the controller this week to talk about, again ems and sort of change the dashboard that we've been using.

we've been very reliant on just the 90 percent response time. and we are going to expand that dashboard to include all sorts of things from the beginning to the end of the call. look at the system from a really holistic perspective. and yesterday i went to station 49 and did a meet and greet with probably 20, 25 members. it was very well-received. chief tong and chief were there. we are having a conversation and really opening the door for more of that and collaboration and it was pretty well received. and i believe that concludes my report. >> thank you very much chief nicholson. at this particular time we will call for public comment on chief

nicholson's report. is there any member of the public that wishes to give public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. at this time commissioners, any questions for chief nicholson? if not then we will proceed to move onto the report from the administration, deputy chief jose velo. >> thank you, mr. president. just one question. you mentioned that you are having conversations with local 798 regarding ems and some of the initiatives that you are going to be putting together. can you elaborate without divulging any confidenceses of course can you elaborate what these might be with 798? >> sure. we are working with them, looking at the entire system and how it impacts they're very concerned with

the members as i am as well, but i'm also concerned in being able to carry out our mission effectively. and some of that does making sure our members are scared away. so we are looking at the entire system from time of call that comes into dispatch, so we are looking at that, to response time, to on-scene time, to time it takes us to get to the hospital. we know traffic is getting worse. so we are using all these sorts of data and statistics to really drill down on our case in terms of what our resource ask will be. and so it's been helpful collaboration. i'm hearing what they are hearing from their members. of course i am going out, we are going out to the stations and talking to folks. but we really want to figure out how we can really

make sure we have a resilient workforce at station 49. >> do you see this -- [off mic] >> no. if we determine that we actually do need more resources it would be an ask in the budget. so we just want to -- we want to dial down on all the data, all the details. so if and when we do go to ask, we are solid and we know exactly >> [off mic] >> exactly yeah. >> thank you very much. >> thank you very much, commissioner cleveland and secretary for the record 527. commissioner veronese has joined us. are there any other comments or questions other than that? did we call chief velo already? >> no, we did not.

>> report from administration deputy chief jose velo on the administrative divisions, fleet and facility status and updates finance support services and training within the department. >> thank you very much, madame secretary. and good evening president vice president, commissioners. [speaking spanish] >> there we go. >> this is my report for the month of october. like i've done in the past few meetings, i have a comprehensive report for you. i'm going to briefly go over some of the highlights of the report. and i'm happy to answer any questions at the end. so some of the personal projects i'm working on. i'm continuing to attend meetings to get the feedback to give the administration's view and vision for the work that's going on. aattended

a workgroup that came up with good, positive ideas that we are going to dial down a little more. the water supply committee. every time i have an opportunity i attend the meetings. i attended this monday's very positive meeting with 798 on health check. we have a really good ideas of what the hurdles were in the past and how we are going to move forward with that. we are going to collect information from different parts that we need to. in regards to the contract part of it so we now have a clear path of where we are going with this. we'll have a contract with the vendors that provide this. at the start of the meeting we are saying we want the best for our members and make sure we get this back in place. so we agree that is the mission and vision. so it was really good to have that meeting. continuing to review our plan. and we are focusing a lot on management training.

we are bringing up more training for our members management training, operations training that we are bringing along to make sure that we have a good upper level mid-management training for our members so they can succeed in future endeavors if they come into the position of management. so we are working on that a lot. we have some in the works. i'll update you more when we have more con treat programs in place -- concrete programs in place. like the chief says, it's a good opportunity to get first-hand information from the folks in there to see what they experience. i will say it's very positive feedback from us going to the stations and getting that feedback. and some things they let me know and we take care of them and we solve them quickly. academying are -- academies are starting. some of you

attended the graduation of the class and some of you were at the ceremony. the mayor was gracious enough to appear and give a speech. it was very nice. we also had a fleet week. we had opportunity to train some marines and folks from the navy and it was enlightening to find out in the initial meeting, some of those folks that back in 2011 with this training, they were able to use it at the hatey earthquake when they responded -- haiti earthquake when they responded there. so that was satisfying to hear that from them. the recruit class started on october 7. we completed two weeks of ems training. and members of 49 joined the class this monday. we lost the recruit on the ems portion so we have 55 remaining for the class. we

have an attrition rate that's normal for classes. so hopefully we keep it low. it's going full boar and i'm getting the reports from them too. we have several classes scheduled for the fall. confined space rescue class tech class which is a repetition of the one we did a few months ago. right now we have a new module, pge is helping us. so they have been very good with us and helping us identifying and helping us train every couple years to do that. the annual drill, very helpful. this year it included a portion about public safety shutdowns. so they had a small session where they were talking about helping those folks that depend on mechanical and electrical devices to survive ventilators, they can go there and identify the devices notify 911 if

there's a need for that. so it was very good and very well-received by them. and we are going to work with dpa tomorrow on those topics too. our nert volunteers, along with our loma prieta anniversary, they were doing the drill and they were helpful with that. they were practicing for a few months with that. so it was good to see them there. we mentioned classes in languages and also nert held a cantonese class this month. we are extending that. we have the program for the spanish person of nert. and we have classes that we continue to try to expand in our languages in the nert program. our planning bureau has been very busy with -- remember from last meeting we were talking about that.

very few hitches with that. the vacancy for our members was published today. after that management will select the process. they've been working hard to make this a smooth process. and i think the members appreciated the transpartnerty how things are working with -- transparency with that. the chief has been busy getting feedback from them too. commissioner, pier 35 is gone. no more delays for that. we are working well with that. if you drive by 35 you won't see a pier there next to station 35. so that's good progress. 49, good news back on track as far as time goes. 50 percent complete construction right now. and we are back on track to final completion date of september 20 of next year. so that's good news. as far as apparatus, it was completed and now they are at central shops to

complete the final document before it gets submitted. so that's good progress on that. we have a bid for two jet skis that will be out soon. six has been ordered and they are in the construction phase in addition to the trucks already in place. as far as station goes, some of the updates station 31 generator will be there by december of this year. they just poured the pad for it, and it's moving along well. some of them were not safe and we had to remove some with the exception of station 15's tower which has become a historical part of the building and they wanted to keep it there for the neighborhood. so that's the only one that is staying. but the others will be removed because they are not safe. a lot of work has been done by chief parks our health, safety and wellness chief. last week and thanks to the foundation from commissioner veronese we have a full class peer support training. it was a wait list of folks. maybe we can do

more in the future. it was well attended and well received information that was given. i'll share some of the graphs as we are starting to analyze the injuries that the members are suffering and what we can do with that that. gathering data to make a case for a more robust unit. some of the data we are gathering primary symptom we have is sprains and strains. we dial down to that. and of course one of the main causes of the sprains and strains are apparatus getting the apparatus off and on so how can we do that. so we are looking at implementing training programs and videos to show the members the proper technique, three point technique of getting off apparatus. so now that we have started to analyze the injuries we can put progress in place and training in place to hopefully reduce

that. the top injuries, the most common injury we have is lower back injury. so we are going to implement some of the techniques for lifting. that's one of the things that causes injuries. so how can we use proper technique, using the legs. so we can come up with a program for that. so that's what chief parks is working on with us. we also have a health fair. we are working together with the doctor's office. we had the health -- the flu shots, we have nutrition information, we have enrollment for that. we are going to bring that back next year in addition to we are going to work with the foundation, some of the tests they are doing. we are going to bring blood pressure testing diabetes testing so a comprehensive test we can provide our members for that health fair. and we do several days of that. so that's good programs. and chief parks has done really well. some of the community events that the

department is involved in, one of the ones that has been successful is the ems program at mission school. they visited the airport they visited the tower. it's really well received. kids really like it. we are hoping we can continue to that and expanding to other schools as well too. we also had recently the nowhere cal fire girl -- nor cal fire girls camp. it was great to see them learning how to be a firefighter. we had a lot of staff from our department and from departments all across the area to help. it was an incredible experience to see the enthusiasm. recruiting office has been busy. usf, we went

to a camp in sacramento, recruiting folks. members of the department talked to folks possible candidates coming in and learning about the job and just hearing from them what it takes to be a firefighter. so as the chief mentioned the anniversary, it's good to see. to finish my report, i want to thank all of you who came to the police and fire mass. it was well attended. it was great to show our appreciation for the many years of service to the fire department. that concludes my report. thank you. and happy to answer any questions. >> thank you very much, chief velo. at this point we'll ask for public comment on chief velo's presentation. any member of the public wishes to give public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissure never knees.

>> thank you, vice president. can you pull up the chart that had the pie chart? is that possible to get back? and while you find it, have we ever done that before? have we done this analysis in the past? or is this the first time we are doing this? >> not that i know of. >> it's incredible. it's great you guys are doing this. because i love the fact that we are gathering data to figure out what the problems are. you probably saw this coming but one of the injuries i don't see on there that i think is important is post-traumatic stress injury. and that, i'm curious as to, if it's possible in the future to see a chart like this that that drills into the type of things that cause that or the types of incidents that the fire department responds to

that are triggering that type of injury. and i think that will tell us a lot about how we react or how the stress unit should react to certain calls. i know it's probably going to be obvious. it's going to be children dying, it's going to be stuff like that. but i think it's worth digging into. and i'm sure that data is probably out there already but i would be curious to see if the same stuff is happening in san francisco. >> one of the things we are doing is asking the unit and now they have also a person in the unit gathering this information. we talked about this before. the member reporting ptsd on a injury report is rare. but how many times is the stress unit helping those folks out there. and that's the data we want to make sure we get. and also anonymous, no names but actually how many times this or that person, length of time, types of injuries, cause and effect of particular events. we had

an event on monday where two infants died eight months old. so we want to see what the effects are for the folks at station 19 that went to that. it's hard for members to report that on a injury report. >> yeah. >> but we can get data from the stress unit. so all of our process with them. we are asking them to provide that and track that information for us so we can have an idea of what we are doing and who are they helping, what are the issues coming up. and again no names just facts like you said. >> great. that's great. thank you chief. i appreciate that. >> sure. >> thank you very much, commissioner veronese. commissioner cleveland, please. >> thank you, mr. president. i would like to echo commissioner veronese's comments regarding the training of our people in terms of what are the injuries out there and how are they being injured. the more information

we gather and the more data we have, the better prepared we are to instruct them on whatnot what not to do. and you need to add ptsd as a type of injury our members get. i would like to commend you for setting up with i assume lieutenant baxter's health fairs. i think that's incredibly important for our members. i appreciate the station visits that you and the chief are doing and the other brass reaching out to the rank-and-file on a regular basis just means a lot to them, more than you probably realize yourself. i appreciate it personally as commissioner. and one question, you talked about the mission high school ems program. what would it take to add a high school, another high school in town to ems training program? >> so what's happening right now is

a pilot program. so we are going to -- we need to see sort of the success of that. and this is just one class. one topic that they are working on this semester next semester is another more ems-involved. so this is the pilot school. >> okay. i didn't realize it was a pilot. sorry. >> so we really need to sort of see how that works. but there is -- i mean there is certainly willingness from the school district and from city college. so we'll just have to see in the future. >> i think it's terrific. so thank you. thank you chief for your report. >> thank you very much, commissioner cleveland. commissioner hardeman. >> thank you -- thank you. hello. is it on? doesn't sound like it's on. thank you president nakajo. as usual these are great reports. the trouble

is with you teaching spanish my son was very fortunate, he was in high school at sacred heart just before he was entering his senior year, to go on our trip to school to the university of -- and when he came back, and i think he got a b plus, which shocks me because they were having a pretty good time over there. [laughter] seventeen-year-olds. anyways they all studied they did good. but he says dad i didn't learn how to speak spanish at sacred heart. so i guess whatever they teach over there is a much different language than they learn. but anyway, that's just a joke, as a comment. i'm sure you spoke a lot of spanish when you

came here, coming from the country just as people from london, they come here probably can't understand us. interesting looking at that pie chart, all the years i was involved with accidents and people being injured and i came back from a conference held each year in the united states for medical attention down in san diego there's like 7 or 8,000 of us that have a big annual conference. so i do know a lot about injuries. but the back, shoulder knee, exactly the same as my union. i could probably come with an eyelash of the percentages that are the same. i know when i was a sign hanger, i was the most fantastic shape that at 33 when i switched over to become a union rep. i remember the

last thing having a lower back and reaching and lifting and did a lot of heavy lifting. in those days, it's not the electric stuff you have now. it's all done with computer practically. so sometimes the back injuries are just unavoidable especially firefighter reaching around, lifting stuff. you can actually feel your back going. i remember just thinking about that one incident. everybody in my shop, it's like they took turns whose back was out that week or that month. some people just had a real bad back and it never ended.

talking about your division report, there's on page 21, there's an injuries

by rank column there and i see h2 firefighters by far have the most injuries. is that because they are in more he numerous in the department? or is there something particular related to that particular position that leads to those numbers. >> yes. those are the ones that are doing most of the trainings and hard work when it comes to fighting fires and lifting heavy objects. they are the highest member number. >> and the back injuries are being addressed how? >> now we can address the training so chief park is working with our occupational health specialist with

stefani, identifying maybe some training videos. education is what we are looking for for them to be able to address that and know that we have this data and showing that the data and these are things we can do to help ourselves with that. >> that's very important because once you have a back injury, you always have a back injury. it's never gone, you know. you can accommodate it, and you can work with it, but it never actually heals to the point where your back is what it felt like previously. i'm sure those of us of a certain age will remember that when you were working in tandem with someone else on a physical task, people would say put your back into it, put your back into it. and that is the exact wrong thing to do. so maybe the campaign can be

called don't put your back into it. just to let everybody know to remind everybody that it can lead to a debilitating situation. all right. on page 24, for 2010. i see that there's an amount of liquidated damages that goes to up to $479,000. do those damage -- $489,000. do those come to the department? >> unfortunately it's public works for the cost. >> since it is the bond that resulted in the department being given that money, again i'm really trying to understand why that money doesn't then come to us.

>> so was it two weeks ago they explained to us they can use it for other bond work, and some of the it has to go to them for the salary ies and costs associated with the work at the station. >> i would like to dig deeper on this with you because this has come to us before. and i suspect that cumulatively we may be losing millions of dollars. and we need the money. [laughter] okay. so that's page 24. and then on page 25, some time ago when pge announced that they would be having a blackout, i asked how the department might be impacted. and so that leads me to the question regarding the emergency generators

for station 14. do all of our stations have the emergency generators and are they fuller powered or are they powdered by -- powered by some other means. >> all stations have generators powered by diesel engines and they can last up to three days in a row without refueling. and we have measures in place so we can refuel them back and keep going. >> all right. so i assume then that they are exterior generators. >> most of them are. some are on roofs. it depends on the facilities. and some are exteriors. >> very good. and you say three days. is that full light refrigeration everything? >> everything in the station working for two days uninterrupted is the level we have. and again, many

stations have fuel pumps. and we have methods now because of this threat we have with the power shutdowns, now we have a method to refuel the generators before three days happens. so we are one of the main departments that needs the fuel so that we have discussions with city agencies that we need the fuel first. but we have ways to get fuel from our stations into the generators if needed. >> that makes me feel very comfortable. i'm wondering if there is a way to find out how many individual homes have generators. because there was a huge article in the newspaper just a couple days ago regarding regular citizens getting these generators for their homes. just because there needs to be some kind of information that goes out to the public regarding how these generators

can lead to other problems. >> correct. the exhaust. >> yes. okay. thank you. and -- let's see. page 28. i can skip that due to time i will skip that one. so i don't know which page this is, but it's human resources resources. the h30 captain position. all of these positions and then it says vice and then there's a person's name after that designation. what is the definition of vice in this particular context? >> so if a member has either tired

or promote -- retired or promoted, there's a vacancy. to fill a vacancy that's how we relate it, so that person is coming in to fill that position. so you see chief his rank was h30 so now we have a new captain taking that spot that was authorized by the city. >> that's why it was confusing to me. because it says rivera. and i was like okay are we missing something? >> he was actually deputy chief. >> okay. and the first name is the person who is currently with the department who replaced him in that? >> yes. >> all right. thank you. i hadn't seen that before. i was wondering what that meant. i think that will do it for me. thank you. >> thank you very much, vice president covington, commissioner veronese.

>> chief commissioner covington reminded me of something. on the issue of, in the past i said the department needs to do a better job of advocating for themselves. and i think that we are leaving millions and millions of dollars on the table by not doing that. and the station 16 thing while that ship may have sailed because it's a contract the city got into years ago, it's a very good example of half a million dollars that could go to buy an engine, probably even a couple engines. >> right. >> so if we have somebody that in this new administration that is in charge of advocating for the department when the contracts come up, that would be amazing. and one of the things you mentioned earlier is pge. so pge is doing the rolling blackouts right? these rolling blackouts happen it's basically them handing off a huge expense to this department, right? these are intentional acts where they

decide to shut off the power.