Touring Station 38 With The Battalion Chief: “it’s controlled chaos”

San Francisco is divided into 10 Fire Battalions. This week Neighborhood Emergency Response Team members (NERTs) from all reaches of Battalion 4’s neighborhoods came together to meet the Battalion Chief and tour Station 38.

Map of San Francisco’s 10 Fire Battalions

Thanks to Jon Kruse of the 4 Heights Group for arranging this rare tour with Captain Tom who is the NERT Program Coordinator, and the new Battalion Chief. They told us they are longtime associates in the department. They went to (fire?) school together 27 years ago!

The yellow Pelican case holds our staging area materials. We also have a canopy stored here.

In the event of a disaster, this is the Battalion that our particular NERT groups will be assisting, and communicating with via the Auxiliary Communications Service by HAM radio, and by runner.

We will set up a staging area in nearby Lafayette Park to gather resources awaiting tactical deployment. We practice this at our citywide drills twice a year, and sometimes neighborhoods practice their own. In the Marina we don’t have enough active NERTs to man our staging area so we’ll stage with the Pacific Heights groups right around the corner from Station 38. Our yellow boxes of staging area materials is stored here.

The Chief, who comes from Battalion 3 in the Tenderloin - the busiest station in the nation? -, described the nature of his work.

“It’s controlled chaos.”

We learned among tasks that the department may need our extra on the ground help with is carrying the hose - and it’s heavy.

Drilling with my battalion neighbors at NERT's Citywide Drill Spring 2025

The NERT Citywide Drill Spring 2025 was held at the Couny Fair building in Golden Gate Park this weekend for SF Fire Department neighborhood emergency response team (NERT) volunteers. I’ve been a certified NERT since 2018 and this is the fourth citywide drill I’ve now participated in.

Besides meeting up with NERTs I’m in touch with as the Cow Hollow and Marina District coordinator role I took on since 2024, there were some new opportunities I especially appreciated. Among them:

BATTALION DRILLS

NERT has shifted from small neighborhood teams to Battalion-based groups that encompass 5 or 6 neighborhoods. It’s how we will organize and stage response together in a disaster. We drilled with our Battalion 4 mates, so got to meet them and work with them for the first time. There were 10-12 of us when I joined them for the ALL HAZARD ROOM, a drill that combines a bunch of hazards: water leaks, gas leaks, downed electrical wiring, a victim trapped under heavy rubble, an uninjured neighbor in a wheelchair who wants to stay with the trapped victim, a sudden fire that needs to be suppressed, and earthquake aftershocks.

RADIO OPS, STAGING AREAs

Most of the day I was with the Hams (I got my Technician license last year and haven’t had much chance to use it yet). At this citywide event, radio operators had drills: there was an Auxiliary Communications System Field Team, with Planning and Walking radio groups for two disaster staging areas that mimicked the staging areas we’d set up for each Battalion group in the event of an emergency. I shadowed/scribed for a radio operator taking down incoming incident messages from our Walker and random people coming to the staging area to report their findings, like building collapses, fires, and injuries needing medical attention and rescue, and then communicating that to ACS Field Leader who interfaced with Battalion.

STOP THE BLEED & OPIOID OVERDOSES

There was a short class on naloxone and tourniquets, which I hadn’t taken before. Now we know how to identify an opioid overdose symptoms, and administer a naloxone dose, as well as apply a tourniquet and make a tourniquet in the field with a strip of fabric and a ballpoint pen. Wouldn’t you like to know how to do this? I think we could all learn it. I want to see this common sense public service instruction everywhere, like on bus stops!

DISASTER VICTIM TRAINING VOLUNTEERS

I didn’t do the FIELD TRIAGE drill this time but saw children victim-actors with simulated injuries: broken bones, lacerations. The kids were disaster victim training volunteers and they helped NERTs practice what we’d do to help them if we encountered them in our neighborhoods after a disaster struck and before emergency services could reach them.

Take a look at a video reel of NERT’s Citywide Drill Spring 2025 from the fire department.