Since the 1906 Earthquake and Fires destroyed nearly 28,000 buildings and killed more than 3,000 people, taxpayers have approved five Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response (ESER) Bonds. The 2010, 2014, and 2020 bonds allocated $1.44 billion for critical upgrades to structures and systems: A new Public Safety Building, a new Station 16 for the fireboats, a retrofitted 10.5-million-gallon Twin Peaks Tank and high-pressure hydrants of the Auxiliary Water Supply System (AWSS), and many others.
There is a flashing red light over one major problem. Proposition A continues the failure to expand what is now the Earthquake Firefighting Water Supply System (EFWSS) to 15 west and south neighborhoods, including the Richmond and Sunset. Nearly
140,000 wood-frame structures — 400,000 residents, one-half of the city’s population — are without the powerful high-pressure systems they have long been promised — and paid for.
The city owns 1,651 high-pressure hydrants, three massive water tanks, two powerful saltwater pump stations, and two fireboats —none of which exist or reach into the 15 unprotected neighborhoods. Not one foot of high-pressure pipe or hydrant. The $1.44 billion in previous bonds provided needed upgrades to their fire stations, and 30 new cisterns with a maximum of 75,000 gallons, which are incapable of suppressing a major conflagration.
The Public Utility Commission’s (PUC’s) plan to use the city’s limited drinking water at Sunset Reservoir on Sloat Avenue for firefighting, instead of employing our inexhaustible saltwater, endangers the entire city. When that potable water is exhausted, or a break in the Hetch Hetchy system fails to refill it, the PUC seeks to transfer polluted Lake Merced water into the drinking water system, contaminating it for weeks or months. Two long pipes from Lake Merced are “… in the planning stage” (PUC, 2024).
In a final kicker to Proposition A, $200 million — 38 percent of its $535 million — goes to Muni to replace their Potrero facility. Muni is not a fire suppression unit. It’s a necessary but separate issue, deserving of a separate vote.
“If anyone says there’s no water for firefighting, tell them to look out the Window.”
– Dr. Charles Scawthorn, author, Fire Following Earthquake
On April 18, 1906, SFFD Chief Dennis Sullivan was scheduled to meet Judge William W. Morrow to force dismissive city officials to build his AWSS. Fireboats with massive pumps; hookups on along the bay to draft saltwater; hilltop storage tanks to feed high-pressure hydrants throughout the city. Sullivan had history in his pocket. The city had burned seven times. An 1851 conflagration destroyed 2,000 structures — 75 percent of the city.
In 1898, Market Street’s massive Baldwin Hotel burned, due to a drinking water system that was — and always will be — incapable of containing massive, multiple fires.
Hours before Sullivan’s court appearance, the 1906 Earthquake destroyed his fire station. He plunged into the basement and lay in a coma for days, while part of his great plan succeeded. Fourteen Navy vessels from Mare Island and San Diego pumped approximately 20 million gallons of saltwater to save the Embarcadero. They kept the
fire from leaping to the west side of Van Ness Avenue, where it would have burned six miles to the Pacific Ocean.
In 1907, voters passed a $5.2 million bond to build Sullivan’s high-pressure, high-volume AWSS. In 1986, voters passed a $46 million bond to upgrade it and add a PWSS — Portable Water Supply System — designed by Assistant Fire Chief Frank Blackburn and Dr. Charles Scawthorn. The PWSS added portable high-pressure hydrants that can be fed by engines, fireboats, or small floating pumps drafting from any water source.
Six days after the PWSS was tested, the Loma Prieta Earthquake struck. At a massive fire in the Marina District, the drinking water system and subterranean AWSS were broken. The fireboat Phoenix pumped for 15 hours — 5.5 million gallons of salt water — on a fire that was one quarter of one city block, preventing a possible 1906 encore.
As mandated by the 1907 Bond, the SFFD owned and maintained the AWSS until 2010, when Mayor Gavin Newsom transferred it to the PUC amidst a budget crisis, and against the wishes of the fire chief and fire commission.
In 2016, the PUC told the Supervisor’s Audit and Oversight Committee it had abandoned AWSS expansion into the 15 neighborhoods in favor of 17 miles of 12-inch diameter hose, to be rolled out after a major disaster. Supervisor Peskin asked who would deploy the tons of cumbersome hose — in darkness, over broken streets, through horrific traffic jams. NERT was PUC’s answer, the volunteer Neighborhood Emergency Response Teams.
Thomas O’Connor, president of the firefighters’ union, wrote Peskin: “We are greatly disturbed by the PUC’s published plans … to abandon the previously announced expansion of the AWSS.”
A PUC rep also suggested auctioning off $6 million dollars of spare AWSS parts and had already scrapped $25,000 in valves for $2,100. Peskin stopped that part.
If Proposition A passes, the four ESER Bonds will total almost $2 Billion, and there still won’t be a single high-pressure line or AWSS hydrant for over 400,000 city residents.
The best ESER solutions are documented: Two high-pressure salt water pumping stations along Ocean Beach — cheaper than what the PUC says it will cost — feeding high-pressure hydrants in every neighborhood. More portable PWSS hydrants and hose tenders carrying 6,000 feet of 5-inch hose, deployable anywhere across the city. An increase in firefighters and equipment in those highly populous areas. If the PUC is going to continue controlling the EFWSS, it might be wise to embed a civil engineer, superintendent, and six skilled plumbers, as was the original crew when the SFFD
owned the system, reporting only to the department and providing quarterly reports on progress.
It’s time for a true ESER bond exclusively for fire suppression: drafting saltwater, preserving the entire city’s drinking water, and protecting 400,000 San Franciscans whose lives and homes are in danger from failed promises.
If history teaches us anything, it’s the fact that history rarely teaches us anything. Let’s fix that, for our sake. Let’s listen to Dennis Sullivan and recently deceased Frank Blackburn, not to wallow in the past, but to save our future.
We need to vote no on Proposition A.
For more information, see www.equalfireprotectionforall.org
James Dalessandro is the author of 1906: A Novel and documentary filmmaker of The Damnedest, Finest Ruins, now on KQED/PBS YouTube Channel. In 2005, San Francisco supervisors voted unanimously to approve his resolution to replace the century-old 1906 death count of 478 with 3,000 plus.
Editor’s note: This op-ed accurately recounts much of San Francisco’s earthquake-fire history and longstanding concerns about westside fire protection, but selectively frames some facts about Proposition A. Prop. A explicitly allocates funding for westside expansion projects. Some matters of ongoing debate among emergency planners, such as claims about the inadequacy of cisterns, are presented here as fact. Finally, the city’s rationale for including Muni’s Potrero Yard in the bond is that resilient transit infrastructure is considered part of disaster response and recovery planning.
The Voice welcomes submissions of unsolicited op-eds and letters to the editor. Acceptance and publication is solely the prerogative of The Voice; no payment is offered for op-eds and letters to the editor. Any opinions expressed in op-eds and letters to the editor are those solely of the writer(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Voice of San Francisco, its staff, contributors, sponsors, or donors. Send op-eds and letters to: Editor@thevoicesf.org.