Every one has heard by now FEMA's 2001 report about the three cities where the
"likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country" would occur.
A terrorist attack in NYC, an earthquake in San Francisco, and a hurricane hitting
New Orlean. So this got me wondering what preventative measure are being taken
to help San Francisco. Here is some of what I found:
From March 2, 2001 San Francisco Chronicle
"President Bush has resurrected a Clinton administration effort to require
all public buildings to carry disaster insurance, a move that could cost California
state and local governments hundreds of millions of dollars."
...
"But the provision re-emerged in the fine print of the 207-page budget
outline Bush sent to Congress on Wednesday. The budget outline said the requirement
would be phased in over three years and would save the federal government $83
million in 2002"
...
"Based on a formula offered by FEMA, the city calculated it would cost
more than $20 million a year just for earthquake insurance on about $7 billion
worth of public buildings -- six times as much as the city spends to insure
against fires, windstorms, explosions, riots and other disasters.
Lucien Canton, director of San Francisco's Office of Emergency Services, said
the city would be better off putting the money toward seismic retrofitting of
its buildings."
--more--
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/03/02/MN213281.DTLFrom Sept 15, 2004 San Francisco Bay Guardian
"Among emergency specialists, "mitigation" – the measures
taken in advance to minimize the damage caused by natural disasters –
is a crucial part of the strategy to save lives and cut recovery costs. But
since 2001, key federal disaster mitigation programs, developed over many years,
have been slashed and tossed aside. FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation
program created by the Clinton administration, has been canceled outright. Federal
funding of post-disaster mitigation efforts designed to protect people and property
from the next disaster has been cut in half, and now communities across the
country must compete for pre-disaster mitigation dollars."
...
"In the Bay Area, where living on an earthquake fault should prioritize
disaster preparedness, state and city funding for emergency management and citizens'
training is often precarious.
"We have a limited state grant, but we rely more heavily on federal funding,"
says Lt. Erica Arteseros, coordinator of the San Francisco Fire Department's
Neighborhood Emergency Response Team training program. She describes the tight
budgetary situation of a year ago, when NERT funding was cut on both city and
federal levels. "We had to operate pretty much on a shoestring."
--more--
This article has a great history of FEMA under Bush.
http://www.sfbg.com/38/52/news_fema.html
From May 2005 San Francisco Magazine:
"Disastrous Preparation
Expect raging fires, major gridlock, hundreds of thousands homeless...
The threat: shaky structures
An estimated 15,000 Bay Area dwellings are built over a "soft-story"
parking area or storefront, lacking adequate diagonal bracing to prevent swaying
and collapse.
The fix: Make diagonal bracing mandatory in every soft-story
building. Engineers estimate that installation costs from $4 to $10 per square
foot. What's your life worth?
What's being done: State Assembly Bill 304 seeks to give cities
and counties the authority to implement soft-
story retrofitting but doesn't make it mandatory. Many apartment owners, particularly
those with rent-controlled buildings, balk at the costs. Some incentives, such
as tax breaks and free building permits, already exist. More are needed.
The threat: overwhelmed firefighters and police
Ruptured gas lines throughout the Bay Area mean that most fire departments will
likely have to fight many fires at once and call every firefighter into service.
Because of budget cuts, the SFFD now closes up to six fire stations a day, and
it lacks the backup equipment to supply all the firefighters returning to duty.
As for maintaining order in the postquake chaos, the SFPD is 282 officers below
its voter-mandated minimum.
The fix: Reinstate the $4 billion in supplemental vehicle license
fees, most of it slated for police and fire protection, that Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger canceled the day he took office. Choosing between getting a $100
rebate on your Volvo and closing neighborhood fire stations should be easy.
The San Francisco Firefighters Union is preparing an initiative demanding the
staffing of all SFFD stations; vote for it in November. And keep the fireboats
in service.
What's being done: In the city's latest budget proposal, the
SFFD gets $8 million less in the next fiscal year.
The threat: a really big homeless problem
Hundreds of thousands of people could be fleeing damaged Bay Area homes and
hotels, one-third of them needing government-supplied shelter. San Francisco's
plans call for emergency housing at the Moscone Center, the Bill Graham Auditorium,
and six schools. This isn't nearly enough.
The fix: Identify large open spaces where tent cities can be
established, as in the Presidio and Golden Gate Park in 1906. Log every hotel
room from Seattle to Las Vegas into a central database, and don't forget to
add the cruise ships that tour the West Coast.
What's being done: Bay Area Red Cross chapters can supply about
20,000 cots and blankets. The San Francisco Office of Emergency Services has
made a priority of surveying the tents, medical supplies, and other items available
throughout the state and how fast we could get them here.
The threat: fire in tall buildings
In San Francisco, more than 150 high-rises are exempt from recent mandatory
upgrades due to their "historical" status; residential dwellings under
three stories are exempt from sprinkler requirements altogether. Other cities,
near and far, are even less cautious: San Francisco's sprinkler laws are among
the strongest in the nation.
The fix: Require all large apartment buildings, skyscrapers,
and commercial buildings to have a good sprinkler system.
What's being done: Not much.
--more--
http://www.sanfran.com/archives/view_story/352/
What I took away from these articles is that Clinton's administration had a proactive stance in taking preventative measures to help communities reduce the effects of disasters. The Bush administration worked to undo that and ship more of the costs onto individual states at a time when most state budgets are tight. Now we are left with just reacting to disasters like Katrina and finding ourselves ill-prepared. :grr: :cry:
Greg
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