Editor:

Regarding your February 2026 article concerning the Emergency Firefighting Water Supply System: 

The west side of SF requires attention to fire risk. Another Bond will accomplish nothing, or worse. There are better approaches.

The June $535 million Bond would allocate only $130 million for the EFWSS. Three prior Bonds dating to 2010 have allocated $308 million. Thus far, no significant EFWSS components exist.  

The plan to draw water from the Sunset Reservoir and Lake Merced is inherently faulty. A major earthquake will rupture the Hetch-Hetchy pipeline serving Sunset Reservoir, and that source is already required for many other emergency needs. Lake Merced water is not potable, and introducing it into the potable EFWSS water lines will contaminate users’ water for months.  

EFWSS would cost well over $1B, estimates already increased from $15 million/mile to $42 million/mile, and there is nothing close to an EFWSS full funding source. An earthquake could easily destroy it, and its complexity presents many failure opportunities. Fire response time is the critical factor, and EFWSS still requires extensive over-ground pumping.

I live here and urgently care about emergency preparedness. Emergency preparedness has nothing to do with constructing an expensive, time-consuming, disruptive and inherently faulty EFWSS.  Here are important fire suppression considerations and proposed superior alternatives:

FIRE CAUSES:

As a first step, recognize that natural gas leaks cause almost all fires. The best solution is for gas lines to have automatic electronic shut-off valves. Where possible, buildings should install earthquake automatic shut-off valves.

EFWSS ALTERNATIVES:

1. An immediate, much less costly, and likely effective alternative would be the purchase of a fleet of pumper trucks that can pump sea water through a laid-on-ground hose system to other such fleet pumper trucks to reach wherever there are fires: a rough cost estimate would be $100 million for such trucks and hoses capable of covering the entire west side. 

2. An immediate, vastly less costly and likely effective alternative would be the purchase of equipment to deliver fire-suppression carbon dioxide, or fire-suppression powder, or fire-suppression foam that can put out fires without water, and which are capable of being added to fire trucks through auxiliary equipment and with the addition of trucks carrying such materials: a rough cost estimate would be from $40 million, and the cost of suppression materials. 

3.  An immediate, fantastically less costly and likely effective alternative would be the purchase of large drones that can apply, with great accuracy, fire-suppression CO2, powder, or foam that can put out fires without water, and are resupplied on site.  While improvements to such devices are seen on a constant basis, at present a fleet of 100 drones would only cost an estimated $8 million, and the cost of suppression materials.

Jason Jungreis