San Francisco Aces Response to Hit and Run Rampage

The hit-and-run rampage that left a trail of carnage on the streets of San Francisco this week put the city's emergency response system to its biggest test since the 101 California St. massacre 13 years ago, when a failed businessman killed eight people.

And by all accounts, the crisis that unfolded Tuesday afternoon was handled with no major glitches.

"I'm very pleased with the emergency response,'' San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said.

The political second-guessing and calls for outside inquires that often follow disasters haven't surfaced. Authorities said recent drills that tested city emergency crews on responding to an earthquake and terrorist bomb attacks were seamlessly applied to Tuesday's incident in which a lone driver roared through the streets of San Francisco hunting down unsuspecting pedestrians -- a scenario never considered in San Francisco's disaster handbook.

The first of what would be a cascade of 911 calls Tuesday afternoon, each reporting an SUV driver mowing down pedestrians, came in at 12:47 p.m. The suspect was in custody 14 minutes later, city officials said.

Within eight minutes of the first call to 911, a report of a car hit at Larkin Street and Golden Gate Avenue, "it was determined that we had a multicasualty event,'' said Laura Phillips, San Francisco emergency communications director.

A computerized SOS went out to city hospitals to find out which ones could handle emergency patients. Ambulance crews were redeployed. San Francisco General Hospital, which serves as the regional trauma center, quickly assembled specialized surgery teams and support staff to be ready and waiting for the most critically wounded patients.

Police officers scrambled to track down the suspect speeding from neighborhood to neighborhood in pursuit of his next victims.

At the emergency communications center on Turk Street, dispatchers dropped their nonemergency tasks, such as running car registration checks and calling tow trucks, and answered 911 calls. Supervisors and managers helped to answer the frantic calls for help.

In a 20-minute period, 252 calls were made to 911 -- nearly eight times the number of calls received in the same period on the Tuesday before, a more normal day.

The dispatchers couldn't keep up. Of the calls that came in, 166 were answered immediately, but others were put on hold. The system, which tracks all calls on a computer, logged 86 hang-ups. Two staffers quickly called back those hang-up callers to make sure they didn't need emergency help. Phillips said all but two people were reached.

There have been no reports of the dropped calls delaying an emergency response. With the prevalence of cell phones, many of Tuesday's 911 calls were duplicate reports about the same incident, Phillips said.

Meanwhile, as the calls poured in to 911, quick decisions were made about where to send police, fire and ambulance crews. A computer, which keeps tabs on the whereabouts of available crews, aided dispatchers.

In all, they sent out 31 Fire Department ambulances and engines and 73 police units. What made the response particularly challenging, say those involved, was that there was not just one crime scene. There were 16.

In one instance, an ambulance was sent to one intersection, only to find no victim. The crew was then sent to another location nearby.

"It got crazy,'' said fire Lt. Mindy Talmadge.

Despite the confusion, she said, "everything went really well.''

The suspect, 29-year-old Omeed Aziz Popal of Fremont, is accused of deliberately running his car into 19 people on Tuesday "and the number could go higher,'' as the investigation proceeds, SFPD Sgt. Neville Gittens said.

Police believe that Popal began his hit-and-run rampage in Fremont, where 54-year-old Stephen Jay Wilson was killed as he walked along a bike lane. Prosecutors charged Popal with murder in Wilson's death, 18 counts of attempted murder and other felonies.