conservation. >> reporter: either way, it's already costing farmers thousands of dollars. >> i've seen twice as i did a year ago. today we're having to feed them, keep them in and feeding hay twice a day. >> reporter: and the financial hit stretches to nearby napa affecting wine makers. >> if we can't to see drought conditions in 2014, we will see a small crop. >> reporter: reservoirs in the south bay are struggling too. in less than an hour from now, they are expected to vote to urge its 1.8 million customers to begin cutting their water use. >> what we really need locally is a 10% reduction. as think go on in the winter, that might go up. >> reporter: and you can conserve water without changing your habits. replacing things like shower heads can make a big difference. these two in particular the santa clara water district gives out for free. all you have to do is contact them. if you live elsewhere, contact your water utility. they will begin deciding what santa clara customers will have to do with their water use. >> okay. good information. few. now invite you to stay with us for continuing coverage of the drought. you can track the rain headed our way at nbcbayarea.com. it will give you a bird's eye view of the weather in your neighborhood. also new at 5:00 show up faster or we'll cut the funding. the fire department has failed to meet the expectations for proper response tom. we are live in san jose with the story. >> reporter: the county pays san jose fire an incentive to show up quickly. and one out of eight times they're not showing up on time. santa clara county supervisor says the fire department is in breach of its contract with the county which requires them to respond within 8 minutes 90% of the time. comparing staff for the month of january, the fire department exceeded that goal in 2010, 2011, and 2012. but between september of 2012 and june of last year, they only met that goal of 88.1% of the time. >> if you're a stroke victim, that's a difference between life and death. >> reporter: their threatening to yank $2.1 million in incentive pay. they hope it will be enough to take a point. >> we have a system that is designed and award and encourage on time arrival and it appears to be having exactly the opposite effect. >> reporter: there may be another issue in the numbers as well. in this letter from january of 2013, the then chief told the city council that the department had been inconsistent in calculating response time as far back as 2009. calls that might have dropped response times even further. they may be even worse than we think. >> i wouldn't necessarily say there was a mistake. i think they were calculated in a way that didn't give us the accurate numbers. >> reporter: the head of the san jose firefighter's association says the public deserves data that tells the truth. >> rather than decisions based on data and now the data is catching up to them. >> reporter: this issue is on the supervisor's agenda for february 4th. >> thank you. tire fieing ordeal left an elderly woman in the hospital. police say a man forced his way into a home this morning. investigators say he shot her and then took off. the bullet going through the woman's shoulder. it also went through a wall, a neighboring fence and then hit a neighbor's housement. >> i heard a bang, what sounded like a bang on the front door. then i heard a car speed off. >> the woman is now listed in stable condition. a new development stemming from the asiana crash. a first responder has filed a defamation claim against the san francisco fire department. elyse duckett claims they falsely identified her as the person running over and killing a 16-year-old girl. the ntsb confirms that duckett's truck was the second of two trucks to hit the girl. duckett claims the department discriminated against her because she's black and lesbian. >>. now to tonight's state of the union address. it is set to begin in less than an hour right here at 6:00. the bay area will be well represented with one local mayor sitting just feet from the first lady. we're wife from san francisco. we're talking about san francisco mayor ed lee. >> reporter: that's right. the mayor's spokesperson says they were notified by the who is just a couple days ago. he got back on a plane and headed back to the nation's capitol. a photo of san francisco mayor ed lee and the president hangs prominently in lee's office. tonight, because of that political relationship, lee will be in the national spotlight. there is speculation lee was invited because of the president's push to raise the federal minimum wage. san francisco has the highest minimum wage of any city in the country. the mayor's spokesperson says it's not the only issue. >> so the mayor is very much looking forward to working with the president over the next year. >> san francisco is on the cutting edge. a lot of technology and new jobs and major corporations. perhaps there's something there. >> reporter: allison howard who chairs the political science department says we should expect a lot of calls to action from the president tonight, most of which may never be fulfilled. the president made at least 41 calls to action during last year's state of the union. only two proposals were enacted. >> other presidents have also had poor years. reagan, for example, in 1986 did not have a very good year. he only had about 5% of his partially enacted. >>. >> reporter: and howard says tonight look for the president to announce proposals that he can enact without congressional approval. she is scheduled to be here in san francisco on thursday for a democratic fundraiser. live in san francisco, nbc bay area news. check this photo out. mayor lee is at the white house now. in just the last hour he tweeted this photo of himself. now after collins announced he was gay last year, the first lady tweeted that she was brought of him and supported him. he was invited to sit with the first lady this evening. he was just 14 when he met president obama for the white house science fair. he is a self-described maker, someone who is designing and building things on his or her own time. still ahead, a bay area doctor that doesn't believe in keeping her professional and personal lives separate. also -- hay ward where the friends and family of the bart officer are saying their good-byes. the brother of the officer who pulled the trigger is speaking out. i'll have a live report coming up. a very difficult day in hay ward as police officers escorted the family of a fallen bart officer to the chapel of the chimes church for a final visit before tomorrow's final funeral. among the ones expected, the fellow officer who accidentally shot the offer. we are live from hay ward with more on what he had to say. >> reporter: michael mays brother says that the detective feels he absolutely has to be at tomorrow's funeral. he says there was never any question that he would be there. tonight at the chapel of the chimes funeral, family has gathered. this is where a viewing is taking place tonight. >> he's very sorry and i know he's very upset about the whole thing. and it's -- it's going to be difficult going forward. >> reporter: that's how john mays describes how his brother, michael mays, is feeling. his younger brother who mistakenly shot and killed a fellow police officer is taking it very hard. >> this is something you don't plan for in life. you don't anticipate it. and i think as a result, it's something -- it's harder to deal with. mays says he hasn't talked to his brother about what took place inside the apartment, but he says, humans make mistakes. >> we're not computers, you know. and so things happen and it's just a very sad event. >> reporter: john mays says his brother loved his job and believes the highly trained officer was born to be a cop. >> he's a good cop. you know, he's a cop's cop. he is -- he's the epitome of what you would expect in the law enforcement. >> reporter: as smith's loved ones say their final good-byes, mays says his brother mans to -- planes to join them -- mans to join them at tomorrow's funeral. >> tomorrow's going to be big with emotions. >> reporter: mays says his family will be there. but knows when the funeral's over, there's a long road of heeling and heart ache ahead. >> how can you possibly minimize this tragic event? you can't. how can you forget it? you can't. >> reporter: now, we can hear the bag pipes playing inside the funeral home. this is where the viewing is taking place tonight. mike mays will join the officer's family at the funeral tomorrow morning. >> thank you, jody. now more details on tomorrow's memorial service. it's scheduled to begin at 9:30 in the morning. it will be held at the neighborhood church of castro volley. hundreds of mourners are expected at the funeral along with a full send off. well, a lot of people consider a doctor who makes house calls as the e pit me of personal service. >> we're going to see just what she's doing. >> caroline hastings is a pediatric hematologist oncologi oncologist. what that means of course, is she's is very smart woman who deals with some very sick kids. that might be one reason to keep her personal distance from him. what she is is tonight's bay area proud. bringing work home from the john regardless of what you do is something most of us try to avoid. even more so when you're a doctor, like caroline hasting. >> it's a constant struggle for positions to find what people refer to as a work-life balance. it consumes us emotionally. and you just can't turn it off when you go home. >> what makes caroline special, though, is that she is a doctor who stopped trying to turn it off. up instead, she invited it in. literally. >> i brought my family into my work and my work into my family. it was actually a lot easier for me and it made more sense and it was comfortable. >> on this day, for example, after treating 10-year-old twins for a rare genetic disorder at oakland childrens hospital, she's treating them to a birthday party at her house. the party is here because the family from reno is staying here. spending the week sleeping right off caroline's dining room. >> just the amazing doctor in the world and the most beautiful friend at the same time. what else could you ask for if you wanted a physician. you couldn't get anything better than this. >> it turns out their not the first out of town patients and their families caroline has housed over treatments over the years. her three teenage daughters have not only become used to it, they look forward to them. caroline chooses to erase almost every line between her personal and professional lives. >> i feel like it's enriched my children's lives. and i feel like it's made me a better physician, a better mother, a better wife, a better friend. >> it's a work life balance that may not work for everyone, but in this case works beautifully. you heard her say it makes her a better physician. she gets to observe these girls outside the hospital. the other thing is the girls suffer a rare genetic disorder called npc. doctor hastings along with the family are pioneering experimental treatment for that disease. really pushing the boundaries of what has been done before and we're working with the parents so closely. they have put in a lot of long hours and do that under the comfort of home. >> those girls' parent versus to be so honored to have such good care for their children. yes, there's rain headed our way. >> there certainly is. the storm track is still off to the north, but eventually, yes, it going to swing down much-immediate needed rain drops for the bay area. now in advance of the storm system, winter storm watch has been posted for the sierra. 6 to 10 inches expected there. great news for skiers. also winds 15 to 40 miles per hour. more on how much we'll get in the individual spots coming up. cloud cover in place, temperatures primarily in the low 60s. take you to to want, the east bay, a lot of low clouds here. the marine layer built up to about 4,000 feet. we're seeing off the coast right now. do expect areas of drizzle for the coast, and also the north bay for tonight. let's take you to the storm system. by all accounts, i'm calling this one stub burn. the longer it sits out here, the longer it has to change its mind. yes, i think as we head throughout the next 36 hours, the cold front's going to move across. and we are going to get rainfall from it. just does not look as intense as it did yesterday. timeline for this, very important here if you're doing any kind of planning. bulk of the rainfall stays off to the north. good news for the roadways if you're traveling again this evening. through the overnight hours, we'll see a few areas of drizzle develop. storm system will be mainly off to the north in the morning. we're not going to see that rainfall push down here across the bay and impacts santa rosa until 10:00 p.m. on wednesday. a lot of you may be asleep when that zone of rainfall moves across here at 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning on thursday. eventually pushing out by 7:00, 8:00 on thursday. i do still think we may see some timing changes with this one just because it has been so slow moving. overall rainfall totals with this, not impressive. went down a little bit from yesterday's thinking. 5 hundredths of an inch to 3,500. let's take you to the forecast. at least it's a sign of winter coming our way. we do have the clouds, temperatures slightly cooler. palo alto, 64. just to mark that possibility of that drizzle in the forecast. we'll also see that shower icon here throughout the north bay. napa, santa rosa. temperatures in the mid-60s for the tri valley. when it comes to sierra snow, we are going to get it up here. we could see anywhere from 6 to 10 inches up at some of the higher elevations. as we wrap things up, it's not snowfall but ice in the southeast. if you're doing any traveling, nasty here from atlanta all the way down to panama city. >> it is a mess. up next, facebook co-founder shows up at a conference in san jose. we'll tell you what he's fighting for. also postal workers protesting why they don't like the office supply store staples getting into the mail business. postal service workers protesting in san francisco upset with a partnership they say threatens their jobs. the u.s. post office is opening retail centers in staple stores. the outlets are staffed with staple employees, a move they say replaces union postal jobs. >> staples workers are 40 hour workers. they make only $18,000 a year. basically what our communities need is more good family wage jobs, not less. >> they said it's about driving up demand for its products. mark suker berg says not yet. the facebook boss spoke at the open compute conference in san jose. he said if more people had access to computers, we could have a more educated society. >> with not having access to banking or credit to go buy a home or start a business. it probably correlates pretty highly to not having good health care or information that you can understand what is happening to you and your family without even access to medicine, have basic knowledge about how you can take care of your family. >> again, that was today in san jose. open compute brings together silicon valley companies, including facebook and bring the internet to other country. >> how the south bay is rallying around polina edmunds. that's next. okay. olympic games now less than two weeks away and the athletes have their bags packed. one of them is right here in south bay. on friday, the high school is having a send offparty for skater polina ed munds. they will also be selling team polina merchandise. we have some of this. look how cute. go, poll li na. >> look at that. >> apparently while she's in sochi, she'll be taking with her her spanish and science homework. >> she has to take her homework? >> she has to. she's a straight a student. >> i think she should take you to you can cheer for her. >> it will be janel. >> high school sendoff on friday. one final note. president obama will be delivering the state of the union address tonight our coverage begins next with brian williams at k5 30. mr. obama will begin his address at 6:00. >> you can always find us online at nbcbayarea.com. bye-bye. on our broadcast tonight, the bitter blast as a rare winter weather event hits the deep south. the kind of weather not seen in a generation as millions of americans struggle to get through this patch of winter. state of the union. we're here in washington with a preview. the president will say it strong. but our new nbc news poll finds a far different view among many americans. money troubles in of all places the house of windsor as the life of a queen ends up costing a lot more than anyone anticipated. and all over this land people today were remembering the life and times and the powerful voice of pete seeger. "nightly news" begins now.