San Francisco County Grand Jury • 2020-2021

A Fluid Concern: San Francisco Must Improve Fuel Resilience

Published: June 06, 2021 33 pages Consolidated Report

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⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.

Findings 21 findings

In the aftermath of a major earthquake (magnitude 7.0 or greater), there will likely be severe citywide fuel and power shortages lasting more than 72 hours.

If these shortages resulted in lack of power to lifeline infrastructure facilities and/or lack of fuel for critical lifeline vehicles, the resulting cascading failures of other lifelines could have life safety and quality-of-life impacts greater than the fuel and power shortages themselves.

The City’s lack of agency sponsorship and dedicated staffing and budgeting for fuel resilience efforts weakens its ability to ensure fuel resilience in an emergency.

The cessation of fuel resilience progress during COVID indicates that the City is not prioritizing fuel resilience comparably to other aspects of lifeline resilience.

In the aftermath of a major disaster, it will be difficult for emergency responders to catalog the citywide fuel needs of backup generators.

It is impossible to determine how much fuel storage is needed to meet emergency demands after a disaster because the City has not prepared proper estimates of fuel needs in a range of disaster scenarios.

Compiling inventories of available fuel in a disaster will likely take at least half a day and will rely partly on manual assessment of sites by personnel who might themselves be unavailable under disaster conditions.

The City will have a severely limited and unreliable ability in a disaster to get fuel from available reserves to sites such as generator tanks that need fuel urgently.

The City has not invested in technological solutions to augment the ability to refuel critical vehicles and generators in a disaster.

F10

The usability of privately-held local fuel reserves in a disaster is uncertain due to the lack of partnerships between the City and private gas station operators and incomplete data about which private stations could best augment critical supplies.

F11

Opportunities to expand fuel reserves within the City are very rare due to geographic constraints but very valuable for fuel resilience.

F12

In the aftermath of a region-wide disaster such as a major earthquake, the ability of the City’s two contracted suppliers to deliver fuel might be compromised temporarily because they would both be susceptible to the same infrastructure failures. 25

F13

The City has not contracted with an emergency out-of-region backup vendor in case the two regular vendors cannot deliver fuel, as recommended by the California Energy Commission, despite the risk of region-wide disruptions compromising both.

F14

Although the City’s two fuel suppliers are contractually responsible for providing technical support on products and offering assistance required by City personnel, they do not participate actively in the planning, simulation exercises, or ongoing work of the Fuel Working Group.

F15

If an emergency fuel delivery by water is needed, the City has not planned adequately for the risk that landing sites might be damaged, thereby compromising their ability to receive fuel delivery vessels or support tanker trucks for city transport.

F16

The City has insufficient knowledge about whether restoration of routes on the Priority Routes map will allow effective refueling of critical backup generators and fleet vehicles in the event of a disaster.

F17

The lack of a published San Francisco Fuel Plan makes it harder to coordinate on consistent fuel resilience best practices citywide.

F18

The lack of fuel resilience-related line items in the 2019 and 2021 Capital Plans indicates that the City is not prioritizing fuel resilience comparably to other aspects of lifelines resilience.

F19

Progress on fuel resilience has been impeded by the lack of a dedicated, reliable funding source.

F20

The City will likely need to replace some critical backup generators with batteries by 2050 but has not initiated planning for this.

F21

The City will likely need to rely at least partially on electric vehicles for critical infrastructure functions by 2050 but has not initiated planning for how this can be done in a disaster-resilient manner. 26

Recommendations 20

R1

The Mayor’s Office should determine an appropriate agency sponsor for the Fuel Working Group by December 2021.
R2

The Fuel Working Group should be reconvened by its agency sponsor by February 2022. The working group should meet at least quarterly thereafter.
R3

The agency sponsor of the Fuel Working Group should select members with strong experience in supply chain logistics and emergency management. The Department of Emergency Management, the Office of Contract Administration, the City Administrator’s Office, and other City departments who are significant users of fuel, including SFPUC, SFMTA, and DPW should dedicate staff time each month through December 2024, or until the subsequent recommendations in this report are implemented.
R4

By December 2022, the Department of Emergency Management should compile an inventory of generators critical to life safety in the City and their locations, portability, fuel needs, tank storage capacities, and burn rates. This inventory should be updated at least annually thereafter. The inventory should include information including generator location, fuel type, connection type, and any access codes needed for emergency delivery.
R5

By June 2023, the Department of Emergency Management should perform a team exercise to estimate likely ranges of fuel usage for critical generators in the City’s inventory in the aftermath of a plausible disaster in which those usage needs would have to be met from local sources. The exercise should give lower and upper bounds stemming from possible variations in which generators would have to run and for how long.
R6

By December 2023, the Department of Emergency Management should develop and test a plan for the quick assessment of local fuel reserves available to City agencies in a disaster, including protocols that ensure incident commanders can assess emergency fuel supply and demand in real-time citywide.
R7

By December 2023, the City should build, retrofit, or purchase a minimum of two additional tanker trucks that can each extract up to 2,500 gallons of fuel from a tank, even in the absence of grid power, and transport it to where it is needed. These vehicles should have the ability to transport both gasoline and diesel fuel. 27
R8

By December 2022, the City should enter into Memoranda of Understanding or contracts with a minimum of two local private gas station operators to ensure that emergency vehicles can access fuel stored at their stations, including making that fuel technically accessible even in the event of a grid power outage. The operators chosen should be prioritized based on criteria relevant for usefulness in a disaster, such as: • Amount of fuel stored at the station • Availability of both gas and diesel • 24/7 staffed operation • Ability to dispense fuel without relying on grid power • Proximity to priority routes • Geographical distribution of stations (i.e., not all in the same place)
R9

In the 2023 Capital Plan, the City should commit to building an additional fueling station with five-ten thousand gallon storage capacity for both gasoline and diesel fuels in the space to be freed up at the Southeast Treatment Plant when the digester replacement work is done, or to identify an alternate site for an additional fueling station if the Southeast plant is not available.
R10

By December 2022, the Office of Contract Administration should prepare a supply chain vulnerability assessment of the City’s two contracted fuel suppliers.
R11

If the two contracted fuel suppliers are found to have joint vulnerabilities that cannot be mitigated adequately, the Office of Contract Administration should enter into a Memorandum of Understanding by December 2023 for emergency backup delivery with a vendor whose facilities and equipment are based outside of the Bay Area.
R12

By December 2021, the Fuel Working Group should ask each City-contracted fuel supplier to send a qualified representative to the Group’s planning meetings, field simulations, and other events where the technical advice and operational experience of fuel distributors are needed to help secure disaster readiness.
R13

By December 2023, as part of a Fleet Week live exercise, the Department of Emergency Management and the Office of Resilience and Capital Planning should test a scenario in which the City’s normal supply line is damaged and delivery by water is necessary. This exercise should include a full demonstration of marine cargo delivery, readiness of the staging area, performance of the transfer-storage-filling equipment, and performance of the tanker trucks. 28
R14

By December 2023, the Department of Emergency Management, the Office of Resilience and Capital Planning, and the Port should prepare a seismic vulnerability assessment of likely delivery sites for emergency fuel delivery by water, including Pier 96, Pier 80, Pier 50, and at least one alternative delivery site.
R15

By December 2022, the Department of Emergency Management should publish an analysis of the priority routes determining whether they will allow sufficiently reliable refueling of critical backup generators and fleet vehicles.
R16

By June 2022, the City Administrator’s Office should publish a San Francisco Fuel Plan developed in collaboration with the Fuel Working Group. The Fuel Plan should cover key resilience measures such as: • Processes and timescales for identifying fuel on hand in City-accessible storage • Citywide policies for maintaining fuel reserves in available tanks (e.g., keeping fleet vehicles topped up at the end of each day, reserve requirements for generator tanks) • Keeping track of burn rates in normal and plausible emergency scenarios • Information centralization for key sources and users of fuel, (e.g., types of hose connections used by fuel tanks) • Scheduling drills around emergency fuel deliveries including surrounding counties • Functional evaluation of city assets needed for emergency fuel delivery (e.g., piers, roadways, and equipment) • Reviewing city contracts with fuel vendors • Developing specifications for equipment that needs to be purchased The Fuel Plan should also incorporate logistical lessons learned from the COVID pandemic.
R17

In the 2023 Capital Plan, the City should commit to funding capital projects that are identified in the Fuel Plan as a high priority to improve fuel resilience in the City over the subsequent ten years.
R18

In the 2023 Capital Plan, the City should specify how it will provide at least $10 million in dedicated funding for fuel resilience capital projects within the next ten years using general obligation bond revenue. 29
R19

By December 2024, the Office of Resilience and Capital Planning should publish a feasibility study on replacing current City backup generators with battery backup installations or other zero-emission technology by 2050. The study should examine costs, risks, and alternatives, including mobile and stationary battery sources, taking into account not only the present state of battery technology but likely future developments in upcoming decades.
R20

By December 2024, the Office of Resilience and Capital Planning should publish a plan for achieving disaster resilience with a zero-emissions City vehicle fleet. This plan should analyze the stationary backup power sources that might be needed to recharge critical response vehicles in the event of a disaster and how bidirectional charging technology might be used to enable the batteries in City fleet vehicles to serve as mobile backup power sources analogous to mobile backup generators but also likely future developments.

No Responses Found 2

Government entities assigned to respond to this report. No response documents have been linked in our database.

California Energy Commission Agency

Port of San Francisco Port Authority