DISASTER PREPAREDNESS CHIEF
BLUNTS CRITICISM

Annemarie Conroy Director of Office of Emergency Services
Photo(s) by Luke Thomas

By Pat Murphy

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Allaying concern she serves as merely a political appointee, Annemarie Conroy yesterday countered political grasp helped more quickly streamline the San Francisco Office of Emergency Services (OES).

Singular focus on her lack of background in emergency planning misses the broader picture, Conroy told the Sentinel in an exclusive interview.

Indeed, it was her knowledge of city government, the political landscape, and Conroy's experience in San Francisco public service which accelerated OES improvements since she took office 13 months ago, she added.

Conroy has served on the San Francisco Police Commission, the San Francisco Fire Commission, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and is well known in city political circles

Conroy suggested the standard for judgment instead should be comparison of OES readiness today with earlier civil grand jury critique of the department.

That critique "outlined a number of tremendous failures in past leadership in the Office of Emergency Services, and we've really taken that as a roadmap to recovery," explained Conroy.

"You have to remember that I was the fifth director in seven months when this administration started, so when I picked up the ball in August of last year there really had been a gap in continuity in pursuing significant changes.

She first prioritized cutting through bureaucratic red tape for acquisition of needed OES equipment, Conroy continued.

Notified of that priority, Mayor Newsom called together "every department in San Francisco that was receiving homeland security money, and…the mayor was very clear that we had to cut the red tape."

Needed OES requisitions are now coded to receive immediate fulfillment, Conroy recalled, adding the code system went into effect one month after she assumed post responsibility.

San Francisco has received $83 million in Federal funds for local disaster preparedness but, Conroy noted, few guidelines came with the money for how it was to be used.

As a result, all local emergency response services developed the San Francisco plan comprised of 22 components, known as annexes.

When the plan was developed one year ago, target was set for all annex completion by the end of this year. All but four annexes are now finalized, Conroy stated.

A recent televised news series criticized incompletion of the component responsible for return of city emergency personnel who live outside San Francisco back into the city following disaster.

For her part, Conroy noted Bay Area counties deferred to Marin County as responsible for Return Annex planning, and did so before Conroy took the helm.

Conroy subsequently, while yesterday refusing to criticize Martin County authorities, forged a regional Bay Area response which incorporates return of emergency personnel, and devised funding mechanism for other counties to participate.

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