Surprise!

Phil Chin, head of disaster planning for the Department of Public Works, is in charge of getting ready for heavy search-and-rescue operations, demolishing buildings contaminated by a weapon of mass destruction, clearing streets so emergency vehicles can move about, barricading radioactive or contaminated sections of the city, and removing hazardous materials and infectious debris. He is blunt about the city's lack of readiness in these areas.

"We are not currently prepared to operate in [a CBRN] environment," he says. "We need to teach folks to use protective equipment [such as Level A suits]. It is expensive to train people and equip them and recertify them annually. Ten years ago, we had some capability, but it was not deemed cost effective and was cut out in a budget crunch."

Chin hopes to receive federal grants to buy two Unimog trucks, the Swiss army knives of emergency response. The $400,000, four-wheel-drive vehicles can function like a bulldozer, a crane, or a debris scooper. Still, Chin says, the Unimogs "are not as good as any single piece of equipment, like a bulldozer, [cutting] torch, crane, lift beams. We can economize by spending on two of those [vehicles], instead of more equipment."

How would city officials cope with all the contaminated corpses that could result from a CBRN attack? Chin says they hope not to have to bulldoze bodies into pits, as was done with many victims of the recent Iranian earthquake. "We may not approach it that way," he says. "As much as possible, those in charge want to salvage remains in a certain manner. It's a cultural thing."

Since the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office isn't capable of handling more than a few dozen radioactive or otherwise tainted corpses, the city probably would call on the federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, which dispatches morticians to decontaminate, bag, and bury casualties of weapons of mass destruction.

DMORT workers would bring in their own Level A suits, bleach, refrigerated storage units, embalming materials, and 55-gallon drums for storing dead pets. But a 35-member DMORT team can only bag about eight human corpses an hour, according to the Army's Guidelines for Mass Fatality Management During Terrorist Incidents Involving Chemical Agents. Although the Army is expanding the number of teams, it has determined that the United States is "unprepared to manage catastrophic numbers of fatalities at the local and regional level."

This means that after a particularly horrible disaster, local officials might have to use Unimogs to plow contaminated and rotting bodies into mass graves, perhaps in Golden Gate Park.

Not everybody perishes in a disaster, of course, and displaced survivors must be looked after. City officials expect up to 40,000 people to be left homeless by a major earthquake. But a radioactive plume blowing across a city of about 776,000 could drive many times that number of people out of their homes and apartments.

The grand jury determined that the city is capable of sheltering and feeding only about 1,500 displaced people -- and then only for 48 hours. According to the city's current emergency plan, cots and blankets will arrive through the good graces of the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. Displaced people will be housed in large halls and public schools. And food will be commandeered from restaurants and supermarkets, although supplies will be limited.

In his reply to the grand jury, Canton explained, "In emergency response, feeding is not considered an immediate need. ... [P]eople can survive without food for a considerable period of time."

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In the mid-1990s, the city invested $166 million in a state-of-the-art emergency communications center on Turk Street. Officials concede, however, that the facility would have serious problems in an emergency. For example, the central 911 radio system cannot talk directly to Muni drivers, BART police, or airport officials. Nor can it penetrate numerous "dead zones" between hills or the interiors of commercial high-rises and some public buildings, such as the Hall of Justice. It also can't reach underground basements and garages, which in a disaster might contain many injured and trapped people requiring rescue.

Canton says these electronic gaps can be filled by issuing portable radios to all first responders, but admits he had only "a small cache" of them.

Linehan says the emergency communication network is as likely to fail here as it did in New York after the World Trade Center attack. A helicopter full of communications gear might help first responders talk to one another and see the big picture, he says.

But San Francisco has no municipal chopper. "After we had a helicopter crash in January 2000, we sold four of our helicopters for [use as] crop-dusters, and the other two for scrap," says Linehan. "There are no plans to acquire a new one."