WHAT THE BIG ONE WILL DO TO SAN FRANCISCO RIGHT NOW
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One has to be leery of politicians especially the ones that have no expertise, are inept, crooked in their ways, and some evil - a perfect example Susan Leal the Manager of San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
Another person that completely fits this category Anne Marie Conroy the inept person who got trained after she was anointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and who is practically in charge of any disaster preparedness such as the Big One if it hits us - god forbid - today or tomorrow. Imagine the buffoonery and the poor leadership in place today. The City and County of San Francisco has the Building Inspection Department (BDI) under an inept person named Amy Lee who is the Acting Director. The BDI does not have a protocol to address any wide range disaster such as San Francisco experienced in 1989. At that time the Marina District was hit badly and the BDI could not gauge the damage nor fully evaluate the situation to put long term processes and protocol in place. Perhaps some folks like Joe O' Donoghue and Joe Cassidy should be hired as consultants to teach the BDI to put in place a practical protocol and processes to quickly come to the rescue of those innocent constituents that will become victims of the BIG ONE. This should be done City Block by City Block and in place now today and not tomorrow. We can talk the talk but it is another to walk the walk. Anyway one looks at the scenario the most important aspect that will help us is heavy machinery, air support, logistics, leadership and good hospital facilities. Our ability to access areas and the know how to remove large heavy objects and clear the way to bring help. As far as I know BDI personnel function some what well under normal circumstances but fail miserably when put in a disaster zone in which Earthquakes have taken a heavy toll of infrastructure and more of lives and confusion is the norm of the day. Add several feet of water and BDI inspectors will be a loss to move less to evaluate and bring about quick action. The BDI is a mess and one has just to listen to the BDI inspectors to fully understand how ill prepared these so called inspectors are to address serious emergency issues as will befall us all when the BIG ONE decides to strike. 72 hours after the Big One strikes and if a Tsunami follows quickly the scenario can be worse. If human beings in the thousands are injured and even if a few thousand die the magnitude of such a scenario cannot be gauged by inept folks such as Anne Marie Conroy and Susan Leal. These two idiots have no clue how to run their offices much less work in a normal fashion if and when the Big One strikes. The excuse these scumbags give you when questioned about leadership and preparedness is that they work as a team - well, this is about leadership and knowing how to put processes in place and that comes with experience and proven leadership. In my subjective opinion we are not prepared and when we are given examples of blowing some bus and having Mickey Mouse fake scenes all over the City as part of disaster preparedness - those points they make are moot. This is not how it will be when the Big One strikes - one or two bomb blast. Such exercises help some the logistics but nothing more and nothing less. We have NO leadership and this has to be addressed on a war footing. Let us set a scenario that may be the FOOLS can begin to figure out. Vast areas will be devasted with rubble found everywhere with little access expect by using very heavy equipment and qualified air support. An added element that this City is not prepared will be stagnant foul water - six to seven feet of water - and in some cases fire. Add to these thousands of mostly people of color in San Francisco that will NOT get any help from the mostly White Folks that will be trying to help their own and leave thousands of people without help for weeks on end. Do not say I did not tell you and warn you all in advance. The Sunset and most of the areas with infill will topple like match sticks. In fact we can experiment right now with the homes with poor foundations in the Avenues. These homes will not with stand a very strong tremor and it is time we bring in the United States Geological Survey experts to lay down the plan and our vulnerabilities Block by City Block. Mayor Gavin Newsom has no clue and will have no clue even after he reads this article. Mayor Gavin Newsom will comprehend some what when he listens to the USGS because they will present to him the empirical data from which he and his cronies cannot run away. The 900 miles of sewer pipes will crack especially since this City does not lay the best pipes and takes its instruction from the UNIONS that do not want the City to lay SUPER FLEX PIPES as they do all over the world in Nations that know better. It matters most at the joints of the pipes. The 1900 miles of Clean Water pipes will fail for months. Now just imagine the large Reservoirs failing even though in recent years we have done a band aid job on them. All our Reservoirs should be evaluated by an Independent Team of Structural Engineers that cannot be bought by politicians. Much of the work done by Mitchell Engineering on our Reservoirs is poor and there fore will come to haunt us when the big one strikes. This holds good for the bridges too critical to transportation but poorly seismically retrofitted by firms such as Mitchell Engineering in very recent times. Beware of the one at 4th and King Street. The City has no clue that the new portions of the General Hospital was build by the constituents of Bayview Hunters Point when some constituents of Bayview took upon themselves to form a non-profit and use Federal Grants to provide the best health service to the constituents of San Francisco. When one states this fact most people do not believe the facts but I have stated it at many forums and the facts are true. No one can prove me wrong. The City has wasted money and waited to too long to retrofit the brick buildings after all these years and now comes the turn to retrofit the new building which does not meet the seismic standards set by the State. At that time the Bayview constituents and others feared that the standing brick buildings at the San Francisco General Hospital would collapse. They wanted the best for the City and when the City did not take the lead they took the lead with excellent leadership from the Bayview. Patients waited in lines from over crowding and when the new hospital was built the City was quick to take credit and forgot the magnitude of the work done by the folks that took the leadership and built the newer portions of the San Francisco General Hospital with any City help. The constituents and leaders from the Bayview. The City has chosen to waste millions of dollars linked to operations at the San Francisco General Hospital. We spend millions on AIDS after allowing thousands to frequent places where unprotected sex takes place. We are quick to defend permissive behavior just for the sake of defending gays because we fear some political reprisal. Bevan Dufty is quick to brag about Gay Habits but fails to rally the Gays to raise funds to built an AIDS hospital say at Mission Bay where all AIDS patients can get quality treatment. I am sure Tom Ammiano will agree with this proposition too and so would the many that are afraid to voice their minds and fear the wrath of the homosexuals. The General Hospital has folks like Mitch Katz who should be fired. He screwed things up are Laguna Honda and now wants thousands of dollars to conduct an Environmental Impact Report to address seismic rehabilitation at the General Hospital. The General Hospital has a billion dollar budget. It has no processes in place to collect quickly and track hospital bills. It fails when it comes to preventive processes to stop such expensive diseases such as AIDS. Yet it wants the City to give it money to conduct a Seismic Report and wants the CONSTITUENTS pay for it. Screw that let Mitch Katz scratch his ass and find the money to save his convoluted ideas. Right now millions of dollars are being wasted at the San Francisco General Hospital and that is reality and a fact. San Francisco has no evaluation or plan to discuss the failure of our Transportation system. Again the best minds and more the structural engineers should be called in to study our aging and not too smooth flowing and some what sturdy transportation system. Add to this the collapse of tunnels and the state of the poor rail tracks the situation is exponentially aggravated. Mayor Gavin Newsom would do well by reading the National Geographic Magazine that has just come out. This issue kind of spells the basic some of the things that I have been saying for a long time. May be some one should read it to him and do us all a favor. He does not like reading too much as it is telling on his eyes. His heart is in the right place and he may act when fully informed. He has been trained to discern but will he? The San Francisco Police Department and the San Francisco Fire Department are not prepared. We should learn some from the Katrina experience but we are NOT New Orleans. Our problems will arise from very prolonged tremors that will shake the very foundations a magnitude 9 on the Richter Scale prolonged tremor. We have not encountered such a Big One before. Very recently they had such a Big One by in the Himalayas on the border between Pakistan and India. We should have sent experts to study that situation. Our faults have been whispering to us - the time is coming and the United States Geological Survey experts can now tell us more from information gathered by the monitoring sensitive sensors placed deep into the crevices that reveal much to the experts. Our City officials have not been in touch with the USGS they have no clue about what they do. Most of them do not live in San Francisco and therefore they are oblivious to the concerns of those constituents that pay their taxes and want San Francisco officials to fulfill their duty. Are we ready for the Big One? |
