let me let me use your microphone, president peskin. thank you. thank you so much. and first of all, thank you all so much for being here. i want to just start by expressing my appreciation to mary ellen carroll for her continued

support of manager king and facilitating the various meetings that take place with the disaster council. there's a lot of work that needs to be done in san francisco to address this. many of the things that we know could happen that we may be surprised by. in addition to those things that we know are coming and having some consistent meetings with our various city service agencies, law enforcement and others who will be responsible when and if anything happens in our city is critical to ensuring the safety of residents of our city. this this conversation and us coming together. i know has been sparked by my push to start to look at the renewing of our alarm system that used to sound

. at 12:00 every tuesday, something that, you know, especially those of us who grew up in san francisco, we would hear consistently and if you heard it outside the scope of that time period, you knew that there was a problem. and the whole point, again, was to test it to ensure that the system was working the way that it should. unfortunately, with technology and with people who started to invade the system, we were put in jeopardy. our safety of our city and using this system was put in jeopardy because we unfortunately had people who had access to the system and who could use it for the wrong reasons. cybersecurity has has been improved. we know it's important to san francisco and the ability to ensure the safety with reliable information is also equally important. we did make at one point the hard decision to scale back, to shut the system down, to avoid problems. but more importantly, this disaster council has had

numerous discussions about the costs related to investing in this system, to bring it up to a place of modern technology, but more importantly to ensure that when this system is operating, we are protecting it. and we are using the appropriate cyber security to ensure that it doesn't get in the hands of the wrong people. so i know mary ellen is going to be talking a little bit about what we plan to do, what it might cost and how we can move forward. but let me also just say san francisco is a place that, you know, it's a major city. so anything could happen, whether that is an earthquake more recently, even though it didn't directly impact us, hurricane ian, we know that there also is the threat of terrorist attacks. we know that there have been various events and other things that have occurred in san francisco, and we have developed new systems

that exist that will allow for people to be made aware whether it's our ability to break into the systems, the various communications around the radio and television. but also the alerts that we have on alert that people can sign up so that they can get alerts as well as our ability to break in and get through to people's cell phone to communicate information using the fire department with, you know, the various microphones, megaphones that they carry on their various trucks and rigs. the ability to get information out there using a lot of different modes of technology is something that currently exist in san francisco. i know that conversation happens around tsunamis and the possibility of tsunamis in san francisco. i know the conversations around the challenges that existed in

treasure island with the drinking water and other things we have never since this system has been down been enabled to distribute information in to the public to protect public safety . but i will say that many of you have heard through the news that i was actually in maui during, you know, the very devastating hurricane and fire that took place. and in fact, the winds were probably more significant than i've ever seen or experienced anywhere. and on top of that, it to have a fire to happen of that mass attitude that swept through the town of lahaina in such a significant way with no alert system, with no sound, when power was down, no internet, no technology, no ability to communicate to anyone what was going on, really

renewed my commitment to look into this particular system and the need to bring this system back up to par for the people of san francisco, because, as i said, we have a number of different communication tools at our disposal. all that we are able to use to address public safety in san francisco in a way to distribute information in. but the question is what happens when we are faced with winds that are so problematic that the power has to be cut when we are faced, faced with challenges that don't allow us to use technology in the same way to distribute information to the public. we need to make sure that we have all levels of redundant communication systems in this city to make sure that

we are able to get information out to the public. so it's time for us to really look at upgrading our system. i'm upgrading the work that we need to do together to ensure public safety and also i want to take this opportunity to just mention nert the neighborhood emergency response team and a desire to try and recruit people. there are thousands of people registered for nert, but we have to make sure that they maintain in their certification so that they are up to date on the latest of technology and information so that when our fire department, our police officers, our sheriff deputies, our disaster service workers and others are not always able to get to everyone in that. people in our various community cities all over san francisco have the training to be able to help their neighbors and to help us

as a city get through this. so i think there are a lot of different layers to our need through this disaster council to start to have conversations that allow for both technology, advanced distribution of information, but also so we're going to have to go back to some basics because in the event of any situation nation, we as a city, we want to make sure that we don't continue to put off the important infrastructure investments. we need to make for this particular system, because it is necessary for the purposes of getting our city to a place where we can ensure that we have every tool at our disposal to address any disaster and whatever may come our way. so today's meeting for the disaster council centers around our

system. our system that look at the possibility of bringing this system back into operation. on what that would entail and what the cost may be be and how we should move forward. and i want to at this time turn it over to mary ellen carroll to provide the details around this. thank you all so much. thank you. mayor breed and i think every disaster, every emergency that we experience or that we see is an opportunity for us to learn. we have in the past decade, cities across the world have increasing faced the consequence associated with our climate change. storms are more intense. temperatures are more extreme, and the impacts of wildfires are more destructive and toxic. in january and march of this year,

as we all know, we experienced historic storms that flooded our streets, took down our trees, our utility pole poles and tore glass off our buildings. as wildfires across the country have resulted in poor air quality and orange sky. as we all remember from 2020. and that new york and the east coast experienced this year and even this past weekend, as we saw hillary. hurricane hilary impacts southern california as it hit the coast as a tropical storm, the first tropical storm in our state in over 80 years. so our changing climate has signified giant impact on how we prepare for respond to and recover from emergencies as our emergency operations center is a critical component of our response, we activate during both planned and unplanned events, and our key responsibilities of the eoc. of course, are maintaining situational awareness, supporting our field operations

, providing alert, warning and notification action, coordinating logistics and tracking finance sources and costs of any disaster. our so just to give an overview, we have as the mayor alluded to, san francisco has a very robust and integrated emergency alert, alert and warning system. our city has made considerable investments that i'm going to just go through pretty quickly here in conventional platforms, technology based platforms, and then community based networks. so we have traditional and social media. so the those are our conventional platforms. the things that we use every day are television, newspapers, online resources, probably social media is the number one, and radio in san francisco. we can use kgw to broadcast out emergency information. radio is super

resilient, and it is true that most of us probably have not turned on a radio in a very long time, and that's okay. but you really should have one that's battery operated in your home and that's part of what we're getting to, is being prepared for anything and really being prepared for when all of our technology is not available to us. we also have the emergency alert system, which sends warning via broadcast cable, satellite. right. and this is the thing that you see on your tv or you hear on the radio, you know, once a month as testing that system and then we have message boards. so those are what we call variable message boards that alert public to various emergencies. you see them when you're driving on the highway. they mostly include information about roadwork and traffic, but they can and they have been used to provide emergency information as well. and then finally, we have our outdoor warning system. and so this is the one we'll talk more

about today. this is the network of over 100 sirens across san francisco that can broadcast an audible alert with a corresponding message in multiple languages. these sirens were taken offline in two december 20th, 19 due to in order for us to mitigate an immediate and serious cybersecurity risk. and it remains our intention to reactivate that system. we have other tech tech logical methods and the one that we use the most and most people are familiar with probably is alert. sf this is an alert that we send in multiple languages to the public . we've sent several today already. we have over 195,000 subscribers for text, which represents 54% of the households in san francisco. you can sign up for alerts by just texting your zip code to eight, eight,

eight, seven, seven, seven, and then we also have telephone alerts, which is like a reverse 911. so those are used and can connect to over 383,000 residential and business landlines. and so that's something that we can do to call people when there is a very urgent message that needs to go out. and we did use that during covid to let people know about stay at home orders and mask mandates. and then the final one is the we alert and that's one that you don't have to sign up for. that comes automatically. they're mostly associated with amber alerts. when your phone buzzes very loud or flash flood warnings. we had one last this past winter during the floods. so then finally, i want to talk a little bit about our conventional platforms. so these are like the non we don't need technology for the most part. but our first responders that are represented here, leadership here on disaster council, our police officers, our firefighters, our sheriff deputies, our park rangers,

those all play a very important role in public alert and warning they can use their lights and sirens as well as their public address and broadcast systems with their vehicles. and that is something that we did use during january 2022, tsunami advisory. do you want to play that video just as just people can see how that works. and the nami and advisory in effect, stay out of the water, off the beach and away from the coast. again tsunami advisory in effect, staying out of the water, away from the coast and off the beach . so that is what we did activate that during the tsunami alert. you can't see it in this video, but you'll see many

surfers still out there not heeding or warning. as a surfer , i understand that it's hard to get them out. but and then finally, we have disaster service workers and those disaster service workers during covid were incredibly instrumental. we deployed hundreds of workers across the city to put up fliers and posters, hang things on doors and knock on doors, literally to get information out. so we are we are adept at to adapting to the needs of what of what the community needs to get important information out and finally, we have our volunteers and community groups. so we have, as the mayor said, volunteer groups like nert and alert. we have an auxiliary communication service is a group of folks that do ham radio communication for service providers like the interfaith council, neighborhood empowerment network and the latino task force and megablock.

these are all two organizations that really were born during covid and that continue to be very strong partners with dlm and the city in emergency preparedness. so you know, finally, i just you know, and just to say a few more things about that, we have the neighborhood community network or nen is very proactive. they work with community days and neighborhoods in order so that each neighborhood can kind of cater their plan and their response to the needs of that community. we have a new program , the neighborhood hub and strong block, that allows for more resources in communities. and we are also have a new program, strong building, where we're piloting with alice griffith apartments that are going to be a model for us to say, how do we do it for? you know, we have so many multi unit buildings and preparing those folks also. so just in summary,

we have, as you can see, a very robust emergency management program here in the city that includes diverse, overlapping ring and redundant alert and warning systems and while we are very confident that our systems are thorough and redundant, we always want to improve. and in particular, we're looking to continue our investments in language capacity and community outreach, both things that we learned lessons very important during covid because not everyone receives the message in the right way. we want to make sure that we get the message to people in whatever way is needed so that they receive it and their safety is assured. and so we welcome the discussion that is we're about to have on these improvements. and we really wish to partner with anyone who wants to help us expand our alert and

warning capacity, whether through people, through financial or systematic resources. so that's the end of my presentation and open it up to our council for discussion. mary ellen i just wanted to appreciate the thorough overview and maybe get into the discussion as to what our plans are that we discussed around the bringing up of the system, what our plans are, are we going to repair the old are we going to do a new system? some of the things we talked about and how we can get going with the with the alarms along the beach area and what are some options, options that we should discuss so that we can begin the process of preparing and understand what's possible. yes, mayor. so we have a approximately 119 sirens throughout the city. we did lose a couple of them in the storm. so part of what we need

to do now that it has been four years since the they were operating operating is we need to go in and the plan is what we're going to do is replace the technology. so they are all run on what we call. so they're not cellular but wireless. so they are not dependent on a cellular system. and each of these individual sirens has backup battery. those are the technology that needs to be absolutely has to be replaced. it. in addition, most people have been here a long time know that depending on where you are in the city, the messaging is clearer or not clear. and we know that in some places of the city you cannot hear, you know, have better, better or worse ability to hear the message and the sirens. so part of what our our first plan is to do is definitely to focus on the coastal side, because we know

that tsunami is a very like likely scenario in which we would use these. and add each one. this just to back up the system was built in 1946, just to be clear. so it's a very old system. during that time, you know, it was really a military it was like a bomb warning system that was put into place. obviously, as we've shown, we have built technology has changed. we have so many redundancies. but but getting back to the lowest common denominator of redundancy, when all of the technology that we are dependent on is not available to us, it makes this kind of solution for alert very important. however, what we need to do is take the newer technology, especially on the sirens and the verbal messaging and ensure that each of those is facing the same way that the height of the siren is in the

right place. so we anticipate we have a contract in order to start moving forward with the technology. so the procurement of the technology is not the issue and we will be moving forward. i think we expect in the next six months that this project will be well on its way . the full extent of when this will be complete is harder to predict just because we're going to have to assess each one of these and potentially make some changes in order to really make the improvements to the technology. so it's a better system than we had when we turned it off in 2019. thank you . all right. so it sounds like we are at the point of discussion on based on on mary ellen's presentation and i know we have a number of our members of the board of supervisors and

other elected leaders and department heads joining us here today. president peskin, i wanted to know if you had any comments or any remarks or questions for this discussion. oh thank you, mayor breed. and thank you for convening the disaster council. i think you're absolutely right. lahaina was a teachable moment and we are living with a very constrained capital budget. so i am pleased that there seems to be unanimity in all quarters to find funds to get the outdoor public warning system back up and running. and i think my colleagues and i are happy to assist in any way if that requires legislative action, we're prepared to do so . thank you. that's really great to hear. president peskin, we appreciate your leadership on this. all right. are there any other comments from our elected leaders who are joining us here today? anything you want to ask

or say? thank you so much for convening today. we really appreciate it. just really look forward to seeing the implementation and look forward to hopefully have some results and timeline for the siren. you know, besides the funding part, i'd love to learn more. i think for the west side particularly, i think is to also in addition to the siren, we'd love to see sort of the just learning again from the maui fire. is that we'd love to see a mapping of evacuation route. we on the west side for us, we actually do see a tsunami evacuation routes, signage throughout the throughout west side. i just love to see a mapping of it or updated mapping of it and to see that those signage are also updated or upgraded if need be. knowing that it's been a while. so thank you. thank you. supervisor and you brought something up. i just wanted to

mention when we bring these back on, i think on the west side, many people do consider them the tsunami sirens, right. but they are all over the city. it really should be. we want to make sure that folks understand that when the siren sound, they could be for any event. and part of what we're learning from maui is that the sirens were generally used for tsunami to send people away from the water. but in this case, the fire was coming toward the ocean. and so we want to make sure that we educate the public that they, no matter where you are, that the sirens are indicating something, especially if they're not happening at 12:00 on a tuesday. and that's something that may not be could be any number of things. and so i just wanted to mention that. and to your point on the be happy to share with you the evacuation routes and we

can even set up a meeting with fire and police as, as they are kind of lead on helping support evacuation. i just want to add that the supervisor brings up a good point regarding eyeing the various evacuation plans, because i do think that typically during fleet week, we take that as an opportunity to highlight the challenges that could exist in san francisco and to make the public aware of, you know, emergency preparedness. but i do think that every neighborhood could be unique to the specific events. and we need to make sure that we are not only working with the supervisor, but we're also working with the community to make sure that they understand stand what this all means and how this could be effectively used in case of an emergency, regardless of what it is. so i do think some more outreach and work around and, you know,

educate ing people about what these sirens actually represent and also the various layers of things that could happen. and what things might mean. look we know anything could happen. so i think, you know, the sirens and making sure that the voice and the clarity of being able to hear and the various languages are being used used is going to be critical to our communication system along with our our networking systems that we have in existence. but ultimately, i think some more outreach and work that we can do to start to elevate the conversation around emergency preparedness preparedness with our various neighborhood organizations, our community groups and others could be very helpful to ensuring that, you know, not just when something happens, we're reacting to it. but you know, how are we being more

proactive with community so that they are also aware of what exists? and can i ask one question? yeah obviously i'm very supportive and i'm glad that we can all agree that this is something that needs to be done. i'm just curious if going forward will be looking to work with the same contractor we've been working with a little concern on that. something is two years and then now we're looking at five years and we're over budget. so are there reasons why and will we plan to work with the same contractor going forward? well, it's a it's a combination of so the technology we have to purchase through a vendor and the delay is not a contractor issue. it was more a funding issue on our part. so and the cost escalation is, is what it what time does to our projects. i see karla behind you nodding so we the i think the biggest challenge is it's a

very unique system and we are working very closely with tt to make sure that we have the right people who will be available and be able to hit the ground running to be able to do the installation, the sort of assessment. so it's two parts. there's technology d then there's integration into our system and the integrating part is more a city resource issue that we feel pretty strongly that we're going to have a good team to do that. in fact, bringing some people back from retired agent who really know the system and will be able to enter, interested and willing and available to help on the project. okay. so funding then can expedite the timeline. yeah. i mean, i think that the we have an existing contract, so i feel pretty confident about getting this started immediately. the issue i think the delay or just the i don't want to say delay, but the challenges in moving it as quickly as possible is going

to be what we find when we do the when we do these and especially along the coast. i mean, this is just what happens. our beautiful coastal coastline is hard on equipment. and so i think that will be the issue more than anything. but we have we have the contract. we have availability on that contract and a new quote. so we're we're really ready to go on this. thank you. but mary ellen, this is a motorola product. yes. and part of what supervisor mentioned in terms of the current contractor, are there other options that we have in our various list of contractors that are possible other than the one that we've been working with ? um i don't have the answer to that right now, but i will we'll find out. mayor that's something that we can explore, especially as we're taking a look at

different technologies and what might come from the assessment, because it might not just be the technology, but other things that might need to me need to be done to repair polls and other things. yeah and i think that, you know, part of what mary ellen is, is doing is, is taking my direction to move as quickly as possible because because the goal is we want to have this system online. but at the same time, this does give us, you know, we have an opportunity to, you know, take a moment to look at what is what has changed. we can't just neglect the fact that the technology, the advancements with artificial intelligence and everything else that's out there . we definitely need to look at what other options exist so that we are not creating a new system where that will need to be updated and improved in the next five years. yeah, i definitely

don't want to come back to you in five years for that. so all right. any other questions or comments for discussion. did you. nobody okay. all right. we do have to we do have to open this item for public comment. but is there anyone here for public comment. it doesn't look like it. all right. seeing none, public comment is closed. and at this time, without any questions, further discussion or public comment, this meeting is adjourned. thank you all so much for being here.

>> i try to start every day not looking at my phone by doing something that is grounding. that is usually meditation. i have a gym set up in my garage, and that is usually breathing and movement and putting my mind towards something else. surfing is my absolute favorite thing to do. it is the most cleansing thing that i'm able to do. i live near the beach, so whenever i can get out, i do. unfortunately, surfing isn't a

daily practice for me, but i've been able to get out weekly, and it's something that i've been incredibly grateful for. [♪♪♪] >> i started working for the city in 2005. at the time, my kids were pretty young but i think had started school. i was offered a temporarily position as an analyst to work on some of the programs that were funded through homeland security. i ultimately spent almost five years at the health department coordinating emergency programs. it was something that i really enjoyed and turned out i was pretty good at. thinking about glass ceiling, some of that is really related to being a mother and

self-supposed in some ways that i did not feel that i could allow myself to pursue responsibility; that i accepted treading water in my career when my kids were young. and as they got older, i felt more comfortable, i suppose, moving forward. in my career, i have been asked to step forward. i wish that i had earlier stepped forward myself, and i feel really strongly, like i am 100% the right person for this job. i cannot imagine a harder time to be in this role. i'm humbled and privileged but also very confident. so here at moscone center, this is the covid command center, or the c.c.c. here is what we calledun -- call unified command.

this is where we have physically been since march, and then, in july, we developed this unified structure. so it's the department of emergency management, the department of public health, and our human services hughesing partners, so primarily the department of homelessness and supportive housing and human services agency. so it's sort of a three-headed command in which we are coordinating and operating everything related to covid response. and now, of course, in this final phase, it's mass vaccination. the first year was before the pandemic was extremely busy. the fires, obviously, that both we were able to provide mutual support but also the impact of air quality. we had, in 2018, the worst air quality ten or 11 days here in

the city. i'm sure you all remember it, and then, finally, the day the sun didn't come out in san francisco, which was in october. the orange skies, it felt apocalyptic, super scary for people. you know, all of those things, people depend on government to say what's happening. are we safe? what do i do? and that's a lot of what department of emergency management's role is. public service is truly that. it is such an incredible and effective way that we can make change for the most vulnerable. i spend a lot of my day in problem solving mode, so there's a lot of conversations with people making connections, identifying gaps in resources or whatever it might be, and trying to adjust that. the pace of the pandemic has

been nonstop for 11 months. it is unrelenting, long days, more than what we're used to, most of us. honestly, i'm not sure how we're getting through it. this is beyond what any of us ever expected to experience in our lifetime. what we discover is how strong we are, and really, the depth of our resilience, and i say that for every single city employee that has been working around the clock for the last 11 months, and i also speak about myself. every day, i have to sort of have that moment of, like, okay, i'm really tired, i'm weary, but we've got to keep going. it is, i would say, the biggest challenge that i have had personally and professionally to be the best mom that i can be but also the best public

certify chant in whatever role i'm in. i just wish that i, as my younger self, could have had someone tell me you can give it and to give a little more nudge. so indirectly, people have helped me because they have seen something in me that i did not see in myself. there's clear data that women have lost their jobs and their income because they had to take care of their safety nets. all of those things that we depend on, schools and daycare and sharing, you know, being together with other kids isn't available. i've often thought oh, if my kids were younger, i couldn't do this job, but that's unacceptable. a person that's younger than me that has three children, we want them in leadership positions, so it shouldn't be limiting. women need to assume that

they're more capable than they think they are. men will go for a job whether they're qualified or not. we tend to want to be 110% qualified before we tend to step forward. i think we need to be a little more brave, a little more exploratory in stepping up for positions. the other thing is, when given an opportunity, really think twice before you put in front of you the reasons why you should not take that leadership position. we all need to step up so that we can show the person behind us that it's doable and so that we have the power to make the changes for other women that is going to make the possibility for their paths easier than ours. other women see me in it, and i hope that they see me, and they

understand, like, if i can do it, they can do it because the higher you get, the more leadership you have, and power. the more power and leadership we have that we can put out te >> in 1948 swensen's ice cream used to make ice cream in the navy and decided to open up an ice cream shop it it takes time for the parent to put money down and diane one of the managers at zen citizen in arena hills open and serve old-fashioned ice

cream. >> over 20 years. >> yeah. >> had my own business i was a firefighter and came in- in 1969 her dad had ice cream and left here still the owner but shortly after um, in here became the inc. maker the manager and lead and branded the store from day to day and in the late 90s- was obvious choice he sold it to him and he called us up one night and said i'm going to sell the ice cream store what you you talking about diane came and looked at the store and something we want to do and had

a history of her dad here and growing up here at the ice cream store we decided to take that business on. >> and have it in the family i didn't want to sell it. >> to keep it here in san francisco. >> and (unintelligible). >> share worked there and worked with all the people and a lot of customers come in. >> a round hill in the adjoining areas loved neither ice cream shop in this area and support russia hills and have clean up day and give them free ice cream because that is those are the people that keep us the opportunity to stick around here four so many years next generations have been coming her

20 er thirty or 40 years and we have the ingredients something it sold and, you know, her dad said to treat the customers right and people will keep on coming back and 75 or 74 years, you know, that is quite an accomplishment i think of it as our first 75 years and like to see that, you know, going into the future um, that ice cream shop will be around used to be 4 hundred in the united states and all gone equipment for that one that is the first and last we're proud of that we're still standing and people people are you tell people it's been around in 50 years and don't plan on