Committee Meetings About the Committee

In 2007 former Mayor Edwin Lee, as a result of touring the devastation that Hurricane Katrina caused in New Orleans, partnered with the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s “Acting in Time Initiative” to identify what investments the City & County of San Francisco should make to ensure a rapid recovery from a major disaster. A key recommendation was to create a Lifelines Council that would bring lifeline providers together to develop a unified set of post event performance standards, both individually and collectively, for public and private utility providers. In addition, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) organization’s 2009 “Resilient City Lifelines Report,” evaluated the vulnerability of  San Francisco’s lifelines and suggested actions steps to increase their resilience to a major earthquake. This report also recommended establishing a Lifelines Council to provide a mechanism for comprehensive planning efforts As a result of these efforts, San Francisco officially formed its Lifelines Council in 2009. 

The Lifelines Council is comprised of representatives from those agencies that own and operate infrastructure systems critical to the recovery and restoration of the City, including electric power, natural gas, fuel, communication, airports, highways and roads, ports, transit, water, and wastewater, as well as those critical agencies that have decision making or regulatory power over infrastructure operators. 

The Council confers, shares information and ideas and collates data that provide the basis for coordinated response that will hasten the recovery, restoration and viability of San Francisco. The collective recovery goal is set in weeks and months.
 
The Council is a passive meeting body pursuant to Administrative Code Section 67.4.
The Lifelines Council meets quarterly on the second Thursday of the month.

Lifelines Council Members