Elected Officials’ Leadership Failures … and Finger-Pointing

Breed and Peskin Fail to Restore Emergency Sirens

Why Are the City’s “Emergency Warning Sirens” Still Silent?

by Patrick Monette-Shaw

Five-Year Delay to Evaluate Potential Alternative Solutions

• • • • • • • • • • January 2025 • • • • • • • • • •

In December 2023, the Westside Observer published an article critical of San Francisco’s failure to get its emergency warning siren system back on. The sirens have been silent for five years since they were turned off in December 2019.

Now, a year later, the siren system still isn’t functioning, despite repeated assurances from outgoing Mayor London Breed and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin — who both promised to obtain funding in 2023 for the warning sirens — that they would be operational again by the end of 2024.

So, when the National Weather Service issued a rare tsunami warning Thursday morning, December 5, 2024, when the 7.0 magnitude earthquake occurred just off the coast in Humboldt County, the finger-pointing began anew.

Misplaced Finger-Pointing

Somewhat comically, when the Humboldt earthquake struck on December 5, SF Gate reported:

“One thing remained silent through the commotion: The city’s emergency siren system, which once existed to warn San Franciscans of crisis situations — a tsunami, for instance.”

SFGate is owned by Hearst Newspapers. SFGate and the San Francisco Chronicle split into two separate newsrooms in 2019, with independent editorial staff.

The December 5 article went on to report that Supervisor Peskin had apparently started the finger-pointing, saying no movement had been made on the plan to upgrade the siren system, despite Mayor London Breed’s office announcing in 2023 that it would prioritize the upgrades.

When asked in December if there are any updates to the plans, Peskin simply said, “Mayor Breed refused to fund it in her budget.”

That finger-pointing may not have been entirely true, calling into question Peskin’s own veracity.

That is because when the City’s Capital Planning Committee published its list of capital infrastructure funding requests on May 6, 2024, and lists of which Capital projects had received funding and which ones had not, the list showed on page 3 that the Department of Emergency Management’s capital funding request of $7.5 million for the “Reactivation of Outdoor Public Warning System Sirens” project (Capital Funding Database ID #1049) had not been approved for capital projects for either Fiscal Year 2025 or Fiscal Year 2026.

The CPC is chaired by the City Administrator (Carmen Chu) and includes the President of the Board of Supervisors (Peskin), the Mayor’s Budget Director (Anna Duning), the City Controller (now Greg Wagner), the City Planning Director (Rich Hillis), the Director of Public Works (Carla Short), the Airport Director (Ivar Satero), the Executive Director of the Municipal Transportation Agency (Jeffrey Tumlin), the General Manager of the Public Utilities System, (Dennis Herrera), the General Manager of the Recreation and Parks Department (Phil Ginsburg), and the Executive Director of the Port of San Francisco (Elaine Forbes).

While Breed does not have a seat herself on the Capital Planning Committee, her Budget Director, Anna Duning, does. So, Breed indirectly influences the decisions of the Capital Planning Committee through Duning. Peskin is also a member of the Capital Planning Committee.

The Capital Planning Committee (CPC) makes recommendations to the Mayor and Board of Supervisors on the City’s capital expenditures and plans. The CPC reviews and submits the Capital Plan, Capital Budget, and issuances of long-term debt for approval. But since the CPC only makes “recommendations,” it does not mean that the Mayor or Board of Supervisors cannot find other funding in the City budget for non-capital improvement projects to award City budget funding approval from the City’s General Fund.

Because the Capital Planning Committee did not approve the emergency warning sirens project, Breed apparently believed she could not officially include it in her City’s proposed budget. This suggests Peskin was stretching the truth, at best, when not blatantly finger-pointing, since Breed and the Board of Supervisors have ultimate approval over the General Fund, not the CPC.

In a previous SF Gate article in February 2024, Breed was quoted as having said in August 2023 how important it was to get the emergency sirens turned back on. That article reported:

“The recent devastation in Maui was a tragic example of how important emergency notifications to residents, businesses and tourists are, and although we historically have had minimal need to use the sirens in San Francisco, we must be ready when the time comes,” Breed said.

Breed’s August announcement was actually a joint news release between Breed and Peskin. The news release claimed (perhaps falsely, in hindsight) that:

“Mayor Breed joined Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin today to announce plans to prioritize upgrading the City’s Outdoor Public Warning System (OPWS) during the Mayor’s Disaster Council meeting, which is convened to discuss emergency preparedness plans and initiatives. The necessary upgrades will secure the system from hacking and allow the City to bring the sirens back after 4 years of silence.”

Although the project had been “prioritized” for funding as far back as August 2023, here we are 18 months later, and the “prioritization” promised to the Mayor’s Disaster Council still appears to be a pipe dream.

Obviously, the sirens have been silent for five years now. Assuming funds to turn the sirens back on are identified in 2025, they’ll have been silent for at least six years by the time the repairs are completed and the sirens are reactivated. That’s like playing Russian Roulette against a tsunami, wildfire, or a major earthquake, needlessly risking San Franciscans’ lives. Since when did we elect public officials like Breed and Peskin who feel they can afford to play Russian Roulette with our public safety?

When the emergency sirens were turned off in 2019, it was because the City’s Department of Emergency Management — which hosted the Mayor’s Disaster Council meetings — had asserted, along with San Francisco’s Department of Technology (DT, formerly DTIS), that the emergency siren system had suddenly become vulnerable to being hacked and manipulated, which presented a clear and immediate threat to the public safety of all residents.

Now, five years later, that places a far greater threat to the public safety of San Francisco’s 809,000 residents and its average 49,500 daily tourists in the event of earthquakes, tsunamis, and wildfires. What part of this do Breed and Peskin not understand about the risk of threats?

Cost Increase

The Mission Local news outlet reported on August 16, 2023, that emergency officials had estimated in 2019 that it would cost $2 to $2.5 million to upgrade the entire outdoor emergency siren warning system.

Just after the Lahaina wildfires on Maui on August 8, 2023, ABC Channel 7 in San Francisco ran a short news segment on August 17 about restoring the City’s emergency warning sirens. ABC reported Peskin had commented that because Laguna Honda Hospital had received partial recertification from the California Department of Public Health to allow resumption of admissions for Medi-Cal patients, perhaps the City wouldn’t need all of a $96 million slush fund sitting in reserves to help LHH regain recertification.

A day later, I contacted Peskin on August 18, 2023, asking him if he was aware that Laguna Honda Hospital had received San Francisco Civil Service Commission approval on June 5, 2023, to potentially issue another $18 million in contracts to help recertify LHH (on top of the then $30 million in consulting contracts LHH had already been awarded), and that an additional $9.9 million contract was potentially headed to the Board of Supervisors for approval.

A month after the Mission Local article, Supervisor Peskin asserted to me privately in September 2023 that approximately $5.5 million would be needed to turn back on and perhaps upgrade the entire emergency sirens network. Peskin thanked me for the heads up about the additional $18 million approved for LHH by the Civil Service Commission. He wrote in response, “I’ll Find the $ [for the emergency sirens].”

It’s not clear if Peskin had ever really found that $5.5 million in the glut of money on reserves to help ensure Laguna Honda became fully recertified or if that “slush fund” was the source of funds Peskin hoped to tap to fund reactivation of the outdoor emergency siren system.

On September 5, 2023, CBS’ KPIX-TV Channel 5 carried a segment reporting City leaders were looking to bring back emergency sirens by the end of 2024. KPIX reported:

“[The emergency sirens]‘was on the perennial list of things [capital projects] to be rehabilitated. It kept falling to the bottom of the list,’ said Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.”

For good measure Peskin added:

“After the Lahaina [wildfires on Maui on August 8, 2023] tragedy, everybody at City Hall realized this was not a wantto have, it was a need to have.”

Three weeks before the end of 2024, and San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management’s request for Capital Funding for the sirens reactivation project has grown to $7.5 million.

The urgent need to have the system operational has all but been ignored.

That suggests that the initial low estimate of $2 million, which was identified in 2019 as being needed to repair the entire siren system, leaped by a staggering 275% change increase to $7.5 million. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know if the current estimate for $7.5 million is to restore only the 27 sirens along the coast or if the entire 119-siren system will be reactivated at the cost of $ 7.5 million. A records request was placed seeking clarification from DEM.

DEM’s map of the locations of the warning sirens is available online here.

In response to a records request to the Department of Emergency Management on December 8 seeking information about whether the $7.5 million DEM requested to reactivate the siren system (that the Capital Planning Committee announced on May 6, 2024 had not been funded) had only been for the 27 sirens along the coast, or if it was for the total network of 119 emergency sirens, surprisingly DEM responded only with a screenshot of an internal April 3, 2024 e-mail exchange and didn’t explicitly answer the question asked.

The e-mail screenshot suddenly revealed that the $7.5 million had climbed to $8 million, even before the Capital Planning Committee denied the funding request — and shockingly, that the $8 million apparently is to install only 35 new sirens. So, it’s still unclear if just one-third (35) of the sirens will cost $8 million, whether that means it will cost an additional $16 million to replace the remaining two-thirds of the 119 sirens (at a total cost of $24 million), since the screenshot added that the Department of Technology had “determined” that all of the siren system components need to be replaced.

If it does end up costing $24 million to repair and replace the entire 119 siren system, that would represent an even more staggering 1,100% percent change increase from the $2 million estimated just five years ago. Since each day and year of deferring the repairs will increase costs, what the hell is the City waiting for?

False Claims Funding Was Secured

In addition to the February 2024 SF Gate reporting, Breed’s and Peskin’s August 2023 news release revealed that Breed had claimed the outdoor sirens bolster a comprehensive warning system. The full news release read:

“The recent devastation in Maui was a tragic example of how important emergency notifications to residents, businesses and tourists are, and although we historically have had minimal need to use the sirens in San Francisco, we must be ready when the time comes. This additional tool will bolster our City’s existing comprehensive alert and warning system.”

Breed actually had things backward. The sirens were installed back in 1942 to warn residents of potential air raids during World War II. The City’s AlertSF system became operational 50 years later, in 2011 or 2012. AlertSF is actually somewhat restricted since it requires subscribers to actively “opt-in” to the service.

So, AlertSF is the actual “additional tool” and is somewhat redundant to the long history of developing public alert warning systems.

In 1951, a system was developed to send citizen warnings using select AM radio stations. In 1963, the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) was initiated to provide audible alerts to broadcast TV stations. In 1997, the Emergency Alert System (EAS) was designed so that the President of the United States could speak to the American people during a national emergency. EAS messages contain a digitally encoded header, attention signal, audio announcement, and a digitally encoded end-of-message marker.

Another earlier SF Gate article on June 21, 2017, reported:

“AlertSF should not be confused with the national Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), which can send alerts of catastrophic events to any mobile device that has pinged a U.S. tower. When cellphone users receive an amber alert or severe weather notification, it’s likely from WEA. While the local emergency management [AlertSF] team has access to WEA, they’ve yet to use it.”

SF Gate reported that AlertSF is typically employed to alert the public to safety emergencies and major disruptions, such as severe traffic problems on a major Bay Area artery, or mass shootings. Does that suggest AlertSF was never designed to tap into or replace the WEA system? Why hadn’t AlertSF used the WEA system during AlertSF’s first six years? Has AlertSF used the WEA system in the seven years since 2017? Are the two systems’ technologies incompatible?

SF Gate’s June 2017 article went on to note that DEM’s spokesperson, Francis Zamora, said DEM knows the AlertSF’s messages can be obtrusive. The article added that Zamora said:

“AlertSF is used sparingly and never for promotional purposes. A 24/7 watch officer monitors local 9–1–1 dispatches and decides which events deserve alerts [over AlertSF] and which disturbances are minor enough to be relegated to Twitter and NextDoor.”

And why is AlertSF used “sparingly”? What’s that about?

Zamora and his staff focused a large share of their days updating Twitter and NextDoor, counting the “hits” they had generated for their productivity statistics.

In 2006, President Bush signed Executive Order 13407, directing the Department of Homeland Security to create a comprehensive public alert and warning system for the United States. FEMA was directed to lead the effort and adopted a set of standards and protocols to support the current “Integrated Public Alert and Warning System” (IPAWS), which is managed by FEMA to provide emergency and public safety information to the public through Internet-connected devices and services. The EAS system evolved over the years, and remains a critical component of what has grown into the IPAWS.

So, Breed had it completely backward. The siren system had come first, and all of the radio, broadcast TV, and digital alert systems connecting to the Internet and eventually to cell phones came later as additional tools to bolster the warning siren system. And the emergency sirens are part and parcel of the comprehensive warning system, even if only for redundancy in the event the electronic messaging components are all knocked out! Redundancy isn’t rocket science; it’s part of robust resiliency preparations, as everyone who has worked for emergency management agencies knows.

Now 16 months after Breed asserted, “we must be ready when the time comes,” as of December 2024, San Francisco was no more “ready” when the threat of a tsunami from the Humboldt County off-coast earthquake struck than the City had been in August 2023.

As for Peskin, he had claimed in the press release:

“While I was initially disappointed that this critical investment in our public safety infrastructure was not funded in the City’s Capital Plan, I am delighted that we were able to collaborate and find funds to finally get the Warning System back up and running.”

Peskin didn’t elaborate on where he and Breed purportedly had “found” the funds and whether he was referring to the “slush fund” of $96 million potentially sitting in reserves to bail out Laguna Honda Hospital.

As it turned out, another round of Capital Projects came around in May 2024 and the Department of Emergency Management was still seeking $7.5 million for the emergency sirens project. The Capital Planning Committee turned down DEM’s sirens funding request, refusing to prioritize it as a “must-have need,” again. If Peskin had identified a funding source, why did the CPC turn down DEM’s siren re-activation project, again?

It was unclear what funds “had finally been found” 16 months ago in August 2023 that Peskin had been referring to, and what potentially happened to that “found funding” that still hasn’t gotten the emergency sirens turned back on. Did Breed and the City simply use that funding to conduct more homeless sweeps in the Tenderloin rather than reactivating the sirens? Were the funds diverted again to help Laguna Honda Hospital finally get recertified following its decertification in April 2022?

Were those funds used to pay bonuses to City employees instead? Is there a forensic accountant available somewhere at City Hall to investigate what happened to those “found funds” intended for the emergency siren system?

Inept City Departments

Peskin and Breed’s joint press release in August 2023 claimed that in response to climate change in San Francisco and devastation in Maui on August 8, 2023, Mayor Breed had directed the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) and the Department of Technology (DT) to upgrade and fully restore the Outdoor Public Warning System. As part of this plan, DEM and DT were reportedly supposed to engage experts to assess current technologies and best practices in outdoor public warning system technologies and determine the system overhaul implementation plan and timeline.

A records request received from DEM on December 9 just revealed in the screenshot linked above that back in April 2024 DEM had recommended issuing a “Request for Information” [a precursor to a Request for Proposal, or RFP] to determine if there are other technologies in the marketplace that could provide another kind of Outdoor Public Warning system in a timelier and more cost-effective manner. The screenshot indicated the RFI timeline process could take another eight to nine months, perhaps starting in April 2024.

Why did it take seven months between August 2023 and April 2024 before DEM even started to engage outside experts, as Breed directed DEM to do?

But the timeline doesn’t mention that if the “new solution” will take 18 months from April 2024 to install and “integrate” replacing just 35 new sirens, that will take until at least October 2025 to get the 35 sirens operational, and perhaps much longer to get all 119 sirens back online. Alternatively, suppose the RFI ends up choosing some other alternative solution rather than replacing just 35 sirens. In that case, the screenshot sheds no light on when an alternative “fix” will come to fruition. Will that be in 2026, or perhaps 2027? Longer than that?

Another records request was placed on December 10 to see if the RFI had been issued yet, and whether that timeline starting in April has been completed or remains ongoing.  DEM initially invoked a ten-day delay to respond to the records request, but on December 16 provided a copy of the RFI that was finally issued on June 24.  The RFI contained a timeline showing potential bidders had to submit an initial response by August 5, and that DEM may or may not issue invitations by September 9 to potential bidders for demonstrations of their outdoor warning system solutions, if “deemed appropriate.”

The RFI did not state whether DEM would actually advance the RFI to a future “Request for Proposals” (RFP) final process.

The RFI stated:

“The City uses Everbridge as its core system to send messages to the public via the opt-in AlertSF system, as well as to perform internal notifications to critical City staff and stakeholders.  The City also uses Everbridge for the Integrated Public Warning System (IPAWS) which allows for Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) and Emergency Alerting System (EAS).

The City is seeking to gather information from industry on technologically advanced solutions that can offer reliable and efficient means for outdoor public warning to supplement the City’s existing emergency notification tools.  DEM is not looking to replace or purchase another Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) or Integrated Public Warning System (IPAWS) product.  The intent of this RFI is to find solutions to supplement existing systems and aid in reaching San Francisco residents and visitors who may not have access to a cellular device or other personal technology during an emergency.”

It isn’t just Mayor Breed who had things backwards.  DEM has it backwards, too.  When it comes to whether the chicken or the egg came first, both Breed and DEM forget the outdoor warning sirens system had come first (during World War II), and the AlertSF and other wireless technology had come second to supplement the siren network.

A significant percentage of San Franciscan’s do not use cellular devices.  And if during an emergency disaster cell phone towers are knocked out, every San Franciscan will not receive cellular-based alerts.

SF Gate had reported AlertSF hadn’t used the WEA system during AlertSF’s first six years.  For all we know, AlertSF may not have used the WEA system in the seven years since 2017, either.

DEM is now refusing to release publicly any of the responses it received from the RFI, claiming that because responses typically precede issuing an actual RFP, responses are considered communications between the City and firms seeking contracts, and may be withheld from disclosure prior to contract award.

What’s more pathetic, DEM is refusing to even release information on how many responses to the RFI it had even received, or whether DEM has issued any “invitations” to bidders yet to demonstrate their systems.

Fully nine months have now elapsed between the April 3 DEM e-mail shown in the screenshot above, saying DEM was “considering” an RFI process that could take nine months.  It’s clear that reactivating only 35 of the outdoor warning sirens for $8 million has been exacerbated by this nine-month delay, and we have no idea how many more months and years it is going to take to get the warning sirens system back in operation due to DEM’s foot-dragging.  After all, the RFI should have been pursued in December 2019 when the siren system was turned off!

A reasonable question is, why did it take DEM four-and-a-half years after the outdoor sirens were turned off in December 2019 to even get around to considering whether to issue an RFI seeking “experts” to explore whether another outdoor warning system might be feasible rather than the siren system? Did it not occur to DEM’s Executive Director, Mary Ellen Carroll, or the Department of Technology Department Head, Michael Makstman, to issue such an RFI in 2019? What took so long to consider engaging outside experts in this field to assess alternative current technologies as a potential option?

And what happened to Breed’s “directive” that DEM restore the siren system to operation?

DEM’s director, Mary Ellen Carroll, earned $309,257 in salary (excluding fringe benefits) in the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2024. For his part, the Department of Technology’s department head, Michael Makstman, earned $291,482 in the same Fiscal Year (also excluding fringe benefits).

Francis Zamora was brought on to DEM’s staff in January 2013 as a mere “Public Information Officer” on a single job requisition slot. He quickly built out DEM’s so-called “AlertSF” cell phone warning system and social media presence on Elon Musk’s platform “X,” (formerly Twitter). Shortly after Zamora was hired onto that single public relations job requisition, he rapidly expanded his turf by hiring a fleet of so-called “Public Information Officer” staff to pump up media coverage of DEM. By June 2015, his job title had been changed to “External Affairs Manager,” reflecting the rapid growth of his subordinates. The public information staff focused on the “AlertSF” warning system and DEM’s emergency preparedness website creatively rebranded from “72 Hours.org” to “SF72.org,” replete with a shiny new and expensive logo, and very expensive four-color, various-sized “tiered” marketing materials on heavy cardstock inserted into a dye-cut cardstock miniature size presentation folder.

Other than accumulating statistics on their Twitter, NextDoor, and AlertSF traffic hits, they did little. Not much was managing San Francisco’s emergency preparedness mission. Other divisions within DEM ridiculed it.

As of June 30, 2024, there are now six job classification code #1314 Public Information Officers handling DEM’s social media presence. That excludes Zamora’s assistant, Kristin Schildwachter, who was also brought on to focus on AlertSF and DEM’s social media outreach. She earned $182,844 as a job classification code #0923, “Manager II” ending June 30, 2024. For his part, Zamora had earned $194,249 (excluding fringe benefits) in the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2023.

After a decade working at DEM, Zamora resigned in October 2023 to become Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s “Chief of Communications” — but only for nine months. Zamora told ABC Channel 7 news that he resigned his position working for Thao on June 25, 2024, in the wake of the FBI raid on Mayor Thao’s house. Zamora wasn’t the only one to jump ship from Thao’s staff.

Enter Olivia Scanlon, Stage Left

The screenshot provided by DEM (above) reveals there is another player in the saga of DEM failing to get the warning sirens turned back on. It turns out that Olivia Scanlon may be a key figure in the warning siren scandal. That’s because the screenshot reveals Scanlon is now a DEM employee, apparently DEM’s “Chief of Policy.” Unfortunately for San Franciscans, Scanlon may be involved in policy decisions regarding the outdoor warning sirens. At the time of the April 2024 e-mail screenshot, Scanlon appears to have been at DEM for approximately nine months or less.

The City Controller’s payroll database shows that in the Fiscal Year that ended on June 30, 2024, Scanlon had earned $231,965 as a job classification code #0941, “Manager II” (excluding fringe benefits) as DEM’s Chief of Policy.

That was actually a step down in the job classification pecking order, although it resulted in an $8,000 pay increase from her previous position as a job classification code #0953, “Deputy Director III” at the San Francisco Fire Department where she had earned $223,880 ending June 30, 2023. Scanlon first served as a deputy director at the fire department at some point in 2019, after having been promoted from a job classification code #9251 to “Public relations manager” in the fire department at some point in mid-2019. She had started as a PR Manager in the Fire Department at $100,081 in mid-2015, after leaving as a job classification code #1835, “Legislative Aide” to former District 7 Supervisor Norman Yee.

Going through the 16 or more years of Scanlon’s City employment back to when she was a mere Legislative Aide to District 7 Supervisors, she has consistently held so-called “Permanent Exempt” (PEX) or “Temporary Exempt” (TEX) City jobs. “Exempt” positions are considered to be “at-will” employees who serve at the discretion of their appointing authorities. They have no civil service job protection, unlike Permanent Civil Service (PCS) employees. That means Scanlon has always served as an employee exempt from Civil Service job testing and competitive merit-based hiring. Her entire employment history appears to have involved “City Hall Family” political patronage handouts.

Readers may recall that a FogCity Journal article on October 26, 2008 reported that a criminal complaint had been filed against Scanlon, then an aide to District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd. The complaint filed with the District Attorney’s office on October 24 by defense attorney David Waggoner alleged Scanlon had falsified evidence and committed perjury when she testified before the San Francisco Ethics Commission on June 9, 2008, during a hearing to investigate alleged money laundering and campaign violations by former District 7 Supervisor Tony Hall. Scanlon had also previously served as a Legislative Aide to Hall.

Two days later, another FogCity Journal article reported the prosecution’s case against former Supervisor Hall suffered a fatal blow and appeared to have evaporated the case after their star witness — Scanlon — refused to testify and instead asserted her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in potential criminal activities in connection with her previous Ethics Commission testimony in the matter, involving two different versions of a single check Scanlon had written to Hall. Scanlon pled the Fifth to avoid perjuring herself even further in the matter.

It’s unclear whether it was then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris who may not have taken action or dropped, David Waggoner’s criminal complaint against Scanlon in order to protect the “City Hall Family.” Friends in high places?

It’s not clear how Scanlon rose to the ranks of DEM’s “Chief of Policy,” but some observers wonder whether her former boss, former Supervisor Sean Elsbernd — who is now Mayor Breed’s Chief of Staff — may have continued helping Scanlon find cushy, well-paid golden parachute jobs in the City Hall family. It’s not known how Scanlon may have any expertise with emergency warning sirens, let alone emergency management policy skills after her six-year career in the Fire Department and a decade or more as a Legislative Aide to the succession of District 7 Supervisors.

Between Carroll, Makstman, Zamora, Schildwachter, and now Scanlon, there has been no progress on analyzing technology improvements to restore DEM’s emergency warning siren system capabilities (putting aside Breed and Peskin’s failures).

Instead, they collectively continue to assert that the City is better off trying to expand the use and adoption of other warning systems, including the cellphone-based “AlertSF” system.

They ignore a central problem: DEM’s “Alert SF” website and smart-phone text message notification system relies on cellphone towers remaining operational. If cell towers are knocked out, “Alert SF” will be completely useless for emergency warnings. That is, in part, why bringing the emergency warning siren system back online is so desperately needed, if only for redundancy purposes during actual emergencies.

Willful Ignorance

The 27 sirens along the coast — and the rest of the 119 emergency sirens throughout the City — would be of the most benefit during a tsunami, earthquake, or wildfire.

The problem is, everybody doesn’t use cell phones — and if cell phone towers are completely knocked out in a 7.0, 8.0, or 9.0 magnitude earthquake, “AlertSF” is not going to be of use to anybody, let alone to DEM’s public information officers.

Multiple news outlets reported on December 5, following the earthquake, that only 195,000 San Francisco residents subscribe to “AlertSF, out of 809,000 City residents. “AlertSF” Subscribers represent just 24.1% of San Franciscans. That leaves 75.9% of San Franciscans vulnerable in the event of any disaster.

Plus the average 49,500 daily tourists have likely never even heard of “AlertSF” before booking their tourist vacations and visits to the City. They might think twice before planning a vacation in our city.

It’s not known just how many of the purported 195,000 AlertSF subscribers are actually San Francisco residents. A significant percentage of the 195,000 subscribers may be residents in other Greater Bay Area cities. A public records request was placed with DEM for the demographics of AlertSF subscribers by city name, since the online registration system form on DEM’s website requires subscribers to provide their names, street address, City, state, zip code, and e-mail addresses, along with their phone and/or cell phone numbers.

Just before we went to press, the Westside Observer received a records request response. DEM creatively asserted that its list of AlertSF web subscribers and registrants contained only 48,192 subscribers, claiming most subscribers sign up by texting their zip code to 888-777, rather than using the website online form. DEM and its technology partners should be able to convert zip codes into corresponding City, state, and country of origin names.

DEM didn’t explain why its list totaled only 48,192 subscribers. If there really are 195,000 subscribers, how did they subscribe or register, if not by texting their zip code to 888-777?

Sadly, we only have a rough estimate of just 24.7% (48,192) of the purported 192,000 AlertSF subscribers — if all 48,192 were all, in fact, San Franciscans.

They’re not. Setting aside for a moment that DEM hasn’t artificially exaggerated its claim of having 195,000 subscribers to protect its social media turf.

Indeed, after cleaning up the list DEM provided of 48,192 subscriber addresses — many of which didn’t list either a city or state — it turns out just 75% (36,152) of the subscribers appear to be San Franciscans, as shown in the table below. Those 36,152 San Francisco subscribers represent a pathetic 4.5% of San Francisco’s estimated 809,000 residents.

Presumably, the outdoor warning alert sirens could do a much better job of reaching the remaining 773,848 San Franciscans who haven’t subscribed to AlertSF.

San Franciso Fire Department officials have opined that the success of emergency warning systems relies — tried and true — on having “redundancy” built into the overall system. The emergency warning system sirens are part and parcel of that “redundancy.”

Each day and year of delay will continue to drive up the cost and will exacerbate any emergency crisis.

Although Breed rightfully noted that San Francisco needs to be ready (with an operational and working outdoor siren warning system), when that time comes, she and Peskin have utterly failed during the past five years as Mayor and Board President to use their bully pulpits to find the needed funds and get the sirens turned back on.

Theirs is a colossal failure of political “leadership” and political will! We’re the ones who will suffer in a real emergency.

Maybe Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie “gets it” and rapidly!

Monette-Shaw is a columnist for San Francisco’s Westside Observer newspaper, and a member of the California First Amendment Coalition (FAC) and the ACLU. He is a Childless (and catless) Cat Daddy, and voter for 50 years. He operates stopLHHdownsize.com. Contact him at monette-shaw@westsideobserver.com.

January 2025