3 weekend deaths in S.F. attributed to heat

Three people appear to have died from the record heat wave in San Francisco this weekend, the San Francisco medical examiner’s office said Wednesday.

All three were elderly — they were born in the 1920s or 1930s — lived alone, and died at home, according to the medical examiner’s office. A review of 911 call records showed that none of them had called for medical help before their bodies were discovered.

“We will look deeply into these incidents and see what

we can learn about improving outreach to elderly and vulnerable populations,” said Department of Public Health spokeswoman Rachael Kagan.

Temperatures spiked at 106 degrees in San Francisco on Friday, the highest recorded reading ever in the famously foggy city.

Officials at the Department of Emergency Management said they beefed up ambulance service after receiving a heat advisory from the National Weather Service on Thursday night. They also set up airconditioned shelters for residents Saturday, including four “cooling centers,” four airconditioned libraries and six swimming pools that were made free to the public.

Still, the scorching heat strained an understaffed emergency dispatch system that Mayor Ed Lee has struggled for months to improve.

On Friday, San Francisco’s 911 dispatchers received 2,900 calls, nearly 50 percent more than the 1,977 they receive on a normal Friday. And on Saturday, 2,719 calls came in — significantly more than the average Saturday tally of 1,957.

Statistics from the Department of Emergency Management showed that on average, dispatchers answered calls in 9.8 seconds throughout the weekend — barely beating the city’s goal of a 10-second turnaround. But the response times were much slower on the hottest day, with a 15-second average on Friday. The average fell to 9.8 seconds on Saturday, and 7.9 seconds Sunday.

By Monday, the weather had cooled off, and so had the phones: the average response time was 4.7 seconds.

Fire Department paramedics and ambulances responded to calls within 10 minutes on average throughout the weekend, Kagan said, citing data from the Department of Emergency Management.

Slow emergency response times are a vexing issue for Lee, who in May issued an executive order requiring weekly performance reports from the 911 call center and mandated that the department fill vacancies as soon as possible. The national standard is that 90 percent of 911 calls should be answered within 10 seconds, but San Francisco dispatchers have not met that goal since early 2012.

Several supervisors criticized the city for not acting fast enough when meteorologists predicted two days of blistering heat. On Tuesday, Supervisors London Breed, Aaron Peskin and Jane Kim called for a hearing on what they said was a sluggish response.

“It is deeply concerning that in a city with San Francisco’s resources, at least three preventable deaths happened as a result of the heat wave — and many more people were affected in non-fatal ways,” Peskin said.

At the hearing in two weeks, “We will be asking the tough questions to make sure San Francisco is not caught flatfooted again,” he said.

Lee’s spokeswoman Deirdre Hussey defended the emergency response system, saying it worked as intended.

“Every decision made was made with the safety of the public in mind,” she said.