New Chief Prepares For San Diego Fire Season

Assistant chief Brian Fennessy has been named the new chief. He has been involved in building the city's fire and rescue Department for the last two decades. He will assess the department capabilities and its challenges. It's been a year since the busload of students disappeared in the Mexican state of Guerrero took out a rally in San Diego over the weekend demanded answers and justice. Plus a new edition of our site to series explores the science of the cheese. I am Marine Kavanaugh KPBS Mid Day is next. First the news. From NPR news in Washington I am Laxmi think. The Syrian crisis poses one of the biggest test get to the international community [ Indiscernible ] President. Obama made Syria a focus of his marks to more than 150 world leaders at the annual gathering of United Nations today. [ Indiscernible ] Obama celebrated progress achieved through international cooperation. 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For NPR news I'm Elizabeth Arnold in Anchorage. Present Joe Biden will be eligible to take part in the debate hosted by CNN were he will decide stick the Democratic Party 2016 nomination. Networks is biting meets all of the criteria required to part October 13. The vice president's morning to this death earlier this year of his son Beau and says he's not sure he could give up residential campaign who saw. Those who have confirmed for the -- Hillary Clinton Vermont Senator. Bernie Sanders and former Pearland Governor. Martin O'Malley. Dow is down 300 point this is NPR news. The city of San Diego's incoming fire chief Ryan Tennessee assesses how prepared we are for wildfire. And San Diego marks a tragic anniversary the disappearance of 43 students in southern Mexico. This is KPBS Mid Day addition. I am Maureen Cavanugh it is Monday, September 20. Here are some of San Diego's [ Indiscernible ] in the KB PS2's work. Notices will be going out to San Diego water customers this week about a proposed water rate increase. The city councils being asked to improve a series of five rate hikes combined those hikes would increase the cost of water by 41% by July, 2019. A new report indicates a change in immigration patterns found its way. The pew preachers Center says in the study of research data that Asians are likely to surpass Latinos as the nation's largest immigrant group shortly after the middle of this century. And UCLA economists a quarterly economic forecast issued this morning that housing in California which is already way too high for many people will become even less affordable to the next two years. Listen for the latest news through the day here on KPBS. Our top story on midday edition in naming Brian Tennessee the new San Diego Fire Chief Mayor Kevin Faulkner says his experience will be crucial as quote the possibility of a strong help me know blooms around a year-round regional fire season progress of the new chief will certainly walk into a challenging situation. Pedis is currently the assistant Fire Chief in a 38 year firefighting betting. He will[ Indiscernible ] in November. The height of that year-round fire season is just about to start for San Diego how prepared are we? And what kind of preparation is San Diego fire and rescue Department making for El Niño? Joining our videos next Fire Chief). Brand welcome to the show. Thank you, Marine. The community just to start out the size of San Diego fire and rescue. How many first responders to be have and how does our capacity stack up against other big cities in California? You bet, we are all told her about 1300 and -- employees that is sworn in in nonfarm. We have approximately up. 870 firefighters, 100 full-time lifeguards and during the bulk of the summer season another 200 seasonal lifeguards so in comparison, and I don't know what the per capita is at this time but we are not staffed nor are we have as many stations certainly that we should when compared to other fire departments. I think we do quite well with what we have and don't largest that is attributed to the training and the caliber of individuals that we hire as firefighters and lifeguards we are very prepared with what we have and of course we are in the process of growing and them [ Indiscernible ] and city Council been very supportive. With fire pit -- our stations anywhere from open designed to opening and as you well know we are about 19 fire station short. All right, how do you assess San Diego higher -- how do you assess the city department coordinates with other departments in the region? Well it's excellent. I go back to 2003 and unfortunately it wasn't, it was not excellent back then and we learned a lot of lessons as a result. We meet regularly not only with the other fire chiefs another fire department and train with them but also law enforcement in terms of evacuations and those sorts of things they are involved in all of our exercises. Our emergency mansion but the County and the city's emergency management departments coordinate with us quite a bit all your long so I have never seen collaboration to the level it is today. In fact we are used as a model nationally and people come out and they are surprised at how well things work your force. So Brian Tennessee will be your priority of San Diego's Fire Chief? Will certainly response times. Keeping up the good work that Fire Chief Maynard started in certain [ Indiscernible ] and city cancel have been filed through with. Emergency responses try to decrease those so all neighborhoods get an equitable response. That's going to remain the number one priority. Amanda Perez I spoke to at city Council and being confirmed last Tuesday was really creating more diverse work for us. The San Diego rescue fire department is to be known nationally as one of the most culturally diverse up departments in terms of having women firefighters on the job. Unfortunately that has decreased significantly. Smear putting together a planned. In fact myself and many others met last week and we are looking at the recruitment side of the house. We are looking at the exam side of the house in the post-exam pre-hiring so really three different phases and we're going to be extending ourselves and our cadet programs and to those neighborhoods that are really underrepresented so over time I believe you're going to see a big change within our department. And wise the diversity of priority with you? Because there are some fire departments that kind of have to be pushed into this? I will type what is quite personal. I sure this is well a Council and you are right, such as the San Diego city of San Diego fire rescue Department issue it's a national issue. And for me it is personal. In 1970 when I was 11 years old I grew up in the Altadena area of Los Angeles County so I went to Pasadena schools and at that time the US District Court identified that school district had knowingly assigned African-Americans and Caucasians to different schools. So busing was ordered. There was the desegregation effort and of course as a hip or sixth-grader I'd no idea what that meant it just meant that I'm on a bus and went to different schools so really I grew up it was more about who I grew up with as opposed to those away to school with. So the lens that I look through is very, very different. I was exposed to diversity before diversity was really a word that was commonplace and I learned from those experiences the shared views, the shared experiences that you can only you can really only get. In fact have shared with others I don't think I was exposed to racism per se until I got out of high school. And into a largely white male workforce. So and I've also seen it with our department. Again having been with more culturally diverse departments, the ideas, the backgrounds, the programs projects I've been involved in, when you create and have a diverse workforce you get different ideas. You ask a benefit as an organization from adversity. Now we have all been watching the terrible fires burning in Northern California. We know that October is a very dangerous time of year here in San Diego. How do you assess the potential for wildfire this year. Will certainly the meteorologist and the folks that are looking in the fuels in the soils of the drop in everything else, we know after this many years of not having even average range that we are very expose. We are seeing fire behavior north of us that we haven't seen before. Fires growing from over the course of six hours to tens of thousands of acres ago we are very concerned. We been somewhat fortunate thus far in that we've been expecting very tropical flow. While it's been warm and accountable we have relative humidity and relative humidity with the exception of wind driven fires really dictates how a fire is going to burn. And we expect as you noted that in October things are going to try out in the atmosphere and the fuels it's a bit concerned. The fuels are dead out there they are not coming back.& El Niño and perhaps a lot of rain but we get 100 inches of rain over the winter, were so going to fire Pro mixer because the fuels are just that stress. A are dead. It's going to be a problem first for a long long time. That he played a key role in developing the city's fire in helicopter program. How has the added to our firefighting capacity? The kind of looked at it always is a force multiplier. We get the report of a vegetation fire summer in the city we throw water resources. We are throwing engines and brush engines and chiefs and to be able to throw aircraft at those fires and knock them down quickly before they become large fires or ground crews can get in there and take care of them is really our goal. We are finding especially in what we consider these open space islands within the city those errors that may not be very big in terms of a create but that are surrounded by structures is that because the fuels are so dry and because the fuels are dead that these fires that we used to be able to knock down very quickly before they spread are getting large quickly and by the time we arrived on scene they are beyond it many times what we have been used to in the past. It sticky a lot more effort to establish those fires. And so you have those particular areas targeted in the city of San Diego is that right? We do. The city has 900 linear miles of canyon rim. There is of course one only needs to fly over the community see everything is built on bridge lines and in canyon bottoms and so these open space islands I'm referencing is a term you're going to hear more of. These can be small one, two, five-acre parcels all over to hundred acres that are dried out and that the community suffers. [ Indiscernible ] fire girls parse the great example of one. Some open space without will that wasn't really a large fire in terms of acreage. 15, 17, 800 acres that it took an destroyed many homes and those are the cuts fires that we are really looking at in the future. Without the threat of the large fire coming out of East County and earning into the urban areas but these open space Island fires are really the areas that we are focusing on. I'm speaking with Brian finished the he's been named the next San Diego Fire Chief and you talked about response times just moment ago and I want to talk little bit about that if we may. The San Diego Police Department started fast response squad to try to make up for the lack in response times and some committees. Tell us what they are and how they've been working. Sure are fast response as we discussed on completing a 12 month pilot program in the Encanto area and really that is an area that has been underserved for a long time. Response times are very very slow so we put a two-person captain and a firefighter paramedic and largely pickup truck with compartment to medical supplies. The idea was they would respond in that service gap to all levels of responses. Some of it was to ensure that of course [ Indiscernible ] very very quickly or that fire that had not really extended very far could be extinguished very quickly until before person engine company or truck company response would override. Very successful. We found out approximately 1800 calls that the fast response squad responded to, about 300 of those allowed us to cancel that engine so it could be available for other types of calls. Unfortunately the engine did have to respond many other times because it just takes that many more hands when you're dealing with a medical emergencies that we are dealing with the fires or the urgencies we have your coax you need those bodies Thursday. So these fast response squad have been successful but as you mentioned they don't make up for the fact that San Diego was down would you say 19 fire stations? Yesterday get report identified 19 service gaps within the city of cynical. White is the plan to actually get those fire stations built and running? We are really fortunate in that Mayor Sanders at the time commission that report and city Council approved the outcome of that report and so right now I believe we have eight or nine stations of those 19 that are in some level of development. We're going to be opening station 45 down in Mission Valley here next month. We will be adding not just enter company down there but a truck company. We have never had a letter company aerobically truck company in that area before. Skyline just had a temporary station open up. We are breaking ground I believe in station to downtown in the next couple months so we're starting to see that growth and it's going to take time. We think it here overnight but we're going to see times improve response times improve here very soon. Now as I said in name and you Fire Chief Mayor Lochner also mentioned this big El Niño that the purely coming our way. Is San Diego fire rescue preparing for El Niño? We are. We are prepared now. Our approaches hey, whether it rains in the middle the summer in a downpour over several days during the winter, we're going to respond as we always do. Our lifeguards are a big part of that response. They have a water rescue team and whenever we get the forecast that we're going to experience X amount of inches or rain. Going to service there up at night there in those areas torturously within the city flood our fire stations are going to have the sandbags for the public to pick up our aircraft are stuck many times of lifeguards so that they can be quickly deployed but our response will be as expected. Are we going to be more attentive to a? Absolutely but it really is not just the fire department effort is an effort that we team up with the police department again I mention of lifeguards but certainly the other city departments. We are communicating among each other in terms of what it is we're going to need to be supported and what her own city facilities are going to need to stay in service. I was going to ask you what challenges faced department? Your dimension several of them, the need for fire stations and the need for increasing diversity on the force that there's another one that occurs to me. This summer the department presented concerns to the city Council that fire and rescue might be seeing a retention problems similar to the one experienced by the San Diego police force. How we work toward retain personnel? Weld that is a challenge. Is a challenge largely that we are seeing as a result of the hiring freeze. All fire department in the state from the recession really stopped hiring. Of course the floodgates are up and everybody is hiring. We're not having a public number people showing up to take her exams. We are experiencing is many times the quality of people that are coming in through the door. If we need X amount of paramedics were going through the process of hiring, those paramedics are intimate by other agencies and what we end with other agencies offer that we do not now is of course the tension. We no longer have that so to the degree that's a factor we certainly have not measured that. We're conducting exit interviews but we're starting to see an increase in folks that either are leaving during the Academy or shortly after the Academy and going to other departments so it is a concern for us. We are starting to track and measure it and you are going to hear more about that in the near future. So finally, Brian, what is your assessment of how prepared San Diego are two-faced wildfires? Well adjusted myself in chief Zimmerman community meeting and Scripps Ranch on Saturday and that's kind of the extreme. Those folks are extremely prepared but of course they had a very had experience in 2003. I think you see the people in [ Indiscernible ] also very prepared. Unfortunately I would tell you that not everybody in San Diego is prepared. We keep beating the drum and keep putting our message out but again, I have the opportunity to fly in those helicopters periodically and looked down at where we are not protected. There are areas of Mission Valley that concern me. We talked about the normal Heights file, I think one of the interviews we had not long ago there are areas that burning there that are right to burn against one of the plans one of my priorities is going to make this messaging here around message. To where we become in San Diego what's known as a fire adapted community. For more information on that you just need to go fire adapted to work and we are going to really focus not only messaging but perhaps look at fuel treatments look at other methods of becoming more prepared and this is an effort that needs to go wrong for multiple years we need to learn to live better with fire. It's just a part of San Diego. It always has been but now that we tell to the community we just need to be prepared and really need to pass that message on so it doesn't take a catastrophe before people get the message. I've been speaking with assistant chief Ryan Heather is the Houston taking over as new Fire Chief is the member. Thank you so much. Thank you, Maureen.