San Francisco Mayor London Breed and the city’s Department of Emergency are urging residents to prepare for another major storm that will dump as many as four inches of rain and pack wind gusts of up to 70 miles-per-hour.
And after 911 dispatchers were inundated with non-emergency calls during last weekend’s deluge, the department is urging residents to dial 311 to report non-life-threatening storm issues.
Mary Ellen Carroll, Executive Director of the Department of Emergency Management, said localized flooding, downed trees, and power outages are likely.
"We urge people to avoid travel on roads during heaviest rains, which will be all day tomorrow," she said. "Six inches of rain can take down a pedestrian, and just a foot of moving water can disable or sweep a vehicle."
She and Dennis Herrera, General Manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, both argued that climate change is playing a role in storms that are battering the Bay Area.
"The planet is changing. We experience this in the summer, we come in front of you when we have heat waves and we experience air quality issues," said Carroll. "I’ve been doing this for 18 years. The past five to six years have been completely different than what I’ve done over my previous almost two decades of work in emergency management. This is the reality."
The entire Bay Area will be under a flood and high wind watch from early Wednesday through Thursday afternoon.
