Good afternoon, i am jeremy spits with San Francisco public works government affairs. Thank you for calling this hears. A brief overview and then turn it over to our assistant superattendant with the bureau of human forest tree and the Deputy Director of operations if you have any questions. Public works is committed to fire safety and has a long history of partnering with the Fire Department. We are committed to greening San Francisco and positively impacting climate predictions. It includes rightofway and street trees and not many undeveloped parcels. We have proactive Maintenance Plans and work with the Fire Department to address areas of concern even on private property. We have quick reactive response when hazards are brought to our attention. As i mentioned. We have very little space near homes or residential areas. Our main areas of responsibility include medians and scattered parcels throughout the city such as along the boulevard and the areas around brotherhood bay and sunset boulevard. They are the full responsibility of Property Owners and some share with public works. We do regular outreach regarding maintenance, attending Community Meetings and partnerships with neighbors have led to great participation to community. Community members come together to volunteer. Some good examples include the fill bettethefi l. B. E. Rt and lt steps. We are committed to addressing fire risks. One example is the program we have been doing for many years but have revamped over the past year with the Fire Department along wher with the city attornr the south face of the burnell hill. There are parcels on that land. Public works sat down and came up with a plan to notify those Property Owners of the responsibilities to clear parcels if the Property Owners were not responsive public works hired a contractor to clear them. We assessed the value of that service on the Property Owners. I am turning it over to Nicholas Crawford to talk about maintenance on our own parcels. Thank you. Thank you, jeremy. Nicholas crawford, trees and landscapes. I would like to talk about regmaintenance work, things we are doing to maintain areas, mowing, digging, removing weeds. Our Landscape Team is trained with the bay friendly landscape qualification. It is our effort to use plants that are a good fit for this area and also any great natives where appropriate. In areas hotter and drier, those climates we are visiting more regularly to reduce the fuel there. One parcel we use goats for Vegetation Management on steep hillsides and in areas with poison oak like the pink triangle. We want to retain trees because of their value, but sometimes we deal with conflict in the city where we may have to address that. Ilwe want the next tree to gron the best spot for the future. We have street tree sf created three years ago. It is now two years old. We are cruising through the city streets pruning them and removing trees as necessary. We provide reaga regular regr maintenance. In terms every response. We get 311 calls that go directly to our staff inboxes. We follow by going out inspecting the site to see what is necessary and if it is necessary dispatching a crew sometimes within hours to deal with it. We rely on the community to provide that set of eyes and ears and be everywhere at all times so that we can get that information. We have also had to change some of our maintenance in response to weed growth when there is a lot of rain we get more growth to tend to more often. During droughts we have dryer grassy areas to mow and maintain in response to whatever the weather is. To step back. The big goal is to plant more trees. We hate removing trees. We want more trees to offset Climate Change and that is our larger goal. We also want to be aware of fire risk and be proactive and responsive in dealing with that. Thank you very much. If you have any questions, we are here. Thank you for your presentation. I dont think we have any questions. Next up. I do have a question for public works. I happen to live on one of the mentioned interesting spots under public works jurisdiction, and there are fires out there all of the time. It is interesting there are certain parts of the steps that are managed by the community and there is no under story, and there are certain it is weird. There is a street not built. The local followings have jurisdiction to the center line of the street. Any cleanup that happens in this unaccepted public rightofway. It is accepted for the purposes of building the stairs but not for maintenance is done by the neighbors. Parts of it are immaculate and there is no dead and down brush oralisms. There are parts that are or limbs. I am not trying to rat out my neighbors. Fire is there all of the time. They practice. There are two fire hose boxes. There is a hydrant there. I see the 28 engine there all of the time. I have never seen public works say this property is a total fire hazard. It sounds like there is more than just the fil the fi l. B. E. T steps. There is a whole bunch of them. Those steps look amazing. The care people invest in that is amazing. 273 you are right. Going up from there to montgomery, you are wrong. The big change in two years is public works is pruning the streets within ter with withe internal trees. The neighbors stepped in to prune the industries. We are waiting. Karla says she is coming. I am not actually talking about the trees. I am talking about the under story. The stuff most flammable are thickets of dead bamboo, tons of ivy. The stuff we saw in the presentations like the rec and park presentation showing dead under story that is where a fire can start particularly given people camp there. I wonder. The question is do you have a regimen to go through on the fireside. I am not talking the tree pruning side. I know you are coming. That wasnt the question. The question is about this is all on the public rightofway. Fire doesnt come and say this is a fire hazard. Fire comes and practice with hoses to see if they can get to the end of the lane and how fast. I have pictures of the 28 engine doing it. Carla. Carla short, San Francisco public works. We dont have a proactive Notification Program for those areas. We will go out and in. We will consult with the fire marshal. If they agree to notify Property Owners, we will do that. In response to this inquiry, we can do an inspection and consult with the fire marshal. I was in no way to suggest that. If you walk with hundreds of tourists every weekend, you will figure it out. Thank you. I will ask the fire marshal, dan, i will tell you why i am saving you for last. Now you have heard all of the departments tell you what they are doing, and if you have a response to whether or not we could do more. This is a good time to let us know. Here are some more copies if you would like them. I am fire marshal for the city and county of San Francisco. My role is i oversee the division of Fire Prevention and investigation. My hopes here today is to speak to code requirements. What are the minimum code requirements for Vegetation Management and wild land urban interface in San Francisco . That is a good starting point. If we want to suggest solutions or strengthen the program, we should start with what is required and are we meeting that minimum . That is my intent today. If you have any questions regarding wildfire operations or training our deputy chief is here to speak to that. We will get started. My presentation will be brief, to the point. I will identify specific code sections. These are found in the fire code and in title 19. Chapter 3 and 49. 3 is general and 49 is specifically wild land urban interface. They are two different things. We will look at two maps. These are developed and published by the cdf, California Department of forestry, adopted by cell fire. California fire. These identify the different fire hazard severity zones. Then i speak to the specific details regarding these codes. Here is the code section. Title 29, part nine, chapter 3. General requirements speak to any structure adjacent to wild grass, shrubs or not necessarily wild land urban interface. These are found in chapter 3 and title 19. What it says is you shall create a fire break of 30 feet up to the structure to limit the spread of fire to protect that structure. It is to remove any combustible vegetation. What is that . Not green. We are talking about chapter three. It is dead vegetation. That is the requirements. That is the general rule of thumb. Within chapter 3 it refers to chapter 49. That is where the wild land interface requirements come into play. If you want you can use that one microphone. They both work. Sorry for the distraction. Here is a map of california. Cdf put this out. It is for the whole state of california. The fire hazard severity zones. You will notice three different colors, four colors. White is federal land or local responsibility areas. You can focus in on San Francisco. It is hard to see. It is all white that is a local responsibility area, not a state responsibility area. There are three classifications. Moderate is yellow. High the orange and very high is red. There is a significant difference between local and state responsibility areas within chapter 49. There are different requirements depending if you are state or local. Here is San Francisco. We look at the. Thayellow. Those are moderate ar, according to cdf. That is yellow, moderate. Where isnt mi mcclaren parkn there . This come the division of for resty. This is a recommended map. The city and county of San Francisco can say we declare this whole county high hazard. Chapter 49 would apply and the rules would apply. This is a guidance given by the state, and that is what you will see as a draft as a recommended approach. This did not capture everything. We will get to specific requirements. Chapter 3 you can see the vegetation talks about weeds and grass, cut down remove any kind of combustible vegetation. Title 19 same. Highlighted in yellow here because under general requirements it refers to the 3g table. Bullet two which should be item two. The next highlighted yellow. You need local authority for extra hazard with the specific site. He or she can ask for greater Defensible Space. You can ask from 30 to 100 feet. That is up to 30 feet. This is chapter 49. It is the wild land urban interface requirements. The first highlighted area is cdf is the one that classifies the hazard areas. We look at applicability. Is this applicable . Under 4906. 2, the first part is. State responsibility area and you are moderate, high or very high chapter 49 applies. In number 2. If you are a local responsibility area, chapter 49 only applies for high hazard designated areas. That does not apply to San Francisco unless we selfimposuit on ourselves. That is the point there. Selfimpose that on ourselves. That is the point there. The reason i mention the minimum requirements is not to discount the concern about fire hazards. I think it is a starting point, a benchmark to look at. If we want to increase that, we can do it at the local level. The Fire Department is open to having further discussions with you if you choose to do so. There are are three ways to do this. We have a 30foot rule. We partner with other agencies. They have been very responsive. Anytime we had a complaint, they have been very responsive. It is not a proactive program, though. When we receive a fire complaint. We have a proactive program with dpw mentioned earlier where we send outletters every spring to clear is hillside. We can continue as we go on, we can task force this, team up with other departments to go visit the sites and come up a plan for each site or city and county of San Francisco can declare the whole county high hazard and we will apply 49 throughout. That is an option. If you were to do that, then chapter 7 of the Building Code kicks in. That restricts you on the Building Materials you can use adjacent to the child land areas. Wild land areas. The material on your roof, tile, you cant use wood shingles. Where to put the vents, the openings, windows, it is quite involved. Would only apply to new construction . Everything there would be grandfathered . Correct, correct. When you talk about Defensible Space, it is for the structure to prevent it. None of these areas have a large street, a man made break adjacent to the areas. You take that into account in the 30foot rule. I would like to mention the Fire Department does not have jurisdiction over federal land, state land, the p. U. C. Also, with that said we do partner with all of them when it comes to Fire Department access and proper water supply. We are the responding agency. I am happy to answer any questions. Thank you for stating the facts. I guess one reason why we are excited to have you here is to rely on your expertise in this area. Even though as chair peskin mentioned, the state may not have considered that of any threat, but if you were drawing the maps, would you include the park . Absolutely. This is where we are i would love to have you work closer to either my office or our offices to see how we can define this. My guess is that probably our areas whether it is mic chairren park that we could Pay Attention to. You made the offer to work closer with some of our other departments in terms of their land like rec and park. Recand park mentioned they would be more than willing to have you work with them. Can i have maybe a report back that in terms of when you say you are going to Work Together to look at these in a proactive way, is it something that we need to legislate or is it something that because we care about our residents that we would do this as just being good partner was the rest of the city. I would like to know what direction to take this. The more we are proactive. I started this hearing with the statement that, well, you know, what might have been good 10 yearyears ago is something we nd to look at how we approach our urban forest areas and other areas that would have a fire hazard because of the type of weather conditions we are seeing these days. I just dont want to excuse the expression have our pants down on this issue. We need to do the best we can. You know, we dont want to end up saying i wish we had done it. That is my sort of challenge to the Fire Department to work with other departments to like you said, site to site plans. I think that would work. I do not have a problem. I dont know if you need legislation for this. If we had a task force inspection. We would all meet together to come up with the criteria. What requirements are we going to implement ponziing certain conditions . How implement when we see certain conditions . Where do we draw the lawns. Unless we have an understanding how far to go casebycase basis. That is number one. When we get with other departments this is reasonable approach then we go out and do the site visits. I appreciate that. Anybody else . Are there scenarios that you can model . Obviously as we just saw, San Francisco doesnt have an urban interface as many other counties do. Historically, fire spray suppren in San Francisco is requiring sprinklers in apartment buildings. You and i have had that conversation about those grandfathered. I passed a law a few years ago because the law of 20 years ago didnt include basements and we were having fires in basements. We captured that going forward, not backwards. We are a highly urbanized area. All of our resource allocation has been around what is associated with a major event like an earthquake. We worry about extending awss and cobenefit pipeline to the west side and putting in cisterns. We dont have this conversation around the park merceds. If we want to impose upon ourselves something that is more strings get than the state imposes upon us with the resulting impacts to surroundings Property Owners or future development, is there away we can model the risk and derm whether or not this is not worth our time and money and we should do what we continue to do which is cisterns and expansion of awss and new intake man folds on port property or something we will look back at when there is a huge fire that burns down half of district 11. We will say we were not concentrating on the wrong things or not enough things. I know you cant predict fire. Can you model fire out of the relatively small handfuls of the recand park. They have wasted the afternoon because you are not a problem. I am having a problem. University of california are great partners. Is there a way to figure this out with some risk benefit assignment . Each site has a different level of risk. Tothe guidelines are there over the experience. They are there for a reason. They do call out for different grades and spacing of trees. That is from learning from past fires. It is already there. We can use those requirements where it is spelled out and say, hey, does this fall under, you know, that hazard. If i had a flat space and my trees are relatively spaced, is that a lesser hazard than in glenn canyon . Absolutely. The slope of the hill, proximity of the trees, canopies, the ground, the fuel on the ground. Yes, we can on a case to case with experience with what is already out there derm what is a greater hazard than other areas. I dont know if that answers your question. This is not one size fits alsoution. Whe fits alsoution. When there is a sidewalk and houses. It is more than 30 feet. It s