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
Chairs
Douglas Legg, Deputy City Administrator
Christopher Barkley, AECOM
Water
Michael Carlin, Acting General Manager, Public Utilities Commission
Wastewater
Brian Henderson, Wastewater Engineering Manager, Public Utilities Commission
Electric Power and Natural Gas
Michael Lewis, PG&E
Fuel
Allen Fore, Vice President Public Affairs, Kinder Morgan
Telecommunication
Cammy Blackstone, Regional Vice President, AT&T
Lee Ann Peling, Franchise Operations Director for California, Comcast
Randy Alton, Wireless Director, Verizon Wireless
Linda Gerull, Director, Department of Technology
Highways and Roads
Jim Davis, Acting Director, Caltrans District 4
Aleric Degrafinried, Director, Department of Public Works
Dennis Mulligan, General Manager and CEO, Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District
Transit
Jeffrey Tumlin, Director, Municipal Transportation Agency
William Powers, General Manager, BART
Michael Germeraad, Resilience Planner, Metropolitan Transportation Commission
Port
Elaine Forbes, Director, Port of San Francisco
Airport
Geoff Neumayr, Chief Resiliency and Sustainability Officer, San Francisco International Airport
Solid Waste
Emergency Management Agencies
Bob Fenton, Region IX Administrator, FEMA
Edgar Castro, Infrastructure Protection Specialist, Department of Homeland Security
Mary Ellen Carroll, Executive Director, Department of Emergency Management
Jeanine Nicholson, Chief, Fire Department
Other City Agencies
Sean Elsbernd, Mayor’s Chief of Staff
Brian Strong, Chief Resilience Officer and Director, Office of Resilience and Capital Planning
Academic Partners
Laurie Johnson, Researcher, UC Berkeley/PEER
Norman Abrahamson, Professor, UC Berkeley/PEER
Community Partners
Brian Whitlow, Executive Director, San Francisco Community Agencies Responding to Disaster
David Briggs, Manager of Water Operations, East Bay Municipal Utility District
