Turning Point(62)

    They walked down Market Street to the Ferry Building afterward, through the food markets there, and then they walked along the Embarcadero by the bay. There were a lot of tourists. They walked far enough so they could see Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. Then they took cabs back to the hotel, and Tom and Valérie went to get his car. They left each other at five o’clock. Tom and Valérie went home to Oakland, and Stephanie went to the hotel with Gabriel, and they went up to his room. Marie-Laure, Wendy, and Bill had a drink at the bar, and Paul went back to the Clift, where he had liked the look of the girls the night before. He was doing fine without Tom as his guide, and just needed occasional advice about where to go.

Stephanie left Gabriel at eight o’clock, since she’d been gone all day, although he asked her again to stay at the hotel with him. He was persistent, but she said she had to see her boys. She wanted him to meet them, but not when Andy was around. She was going to try and arrange it sometime during his stay.

Andy had just put the boys to bed when she got home and she kissed them goodnight. They were already half asleep and had had a good day at their grandmother’s.

“You got some sun today,” Andy commented.

“We walked along the Embarcadero for miles. They want to see all the sights,” she said blandly.

“Did you have fun?”

“They’re a good group. You’ll meet them on Wednesday.” He nodded and didn’t comment. She read the papers they’d been sent by the DEM, and she was looking forward to seeing SF General with Bill. She hadn’t been there in quite a while and heard wonderful things about their new facility. She was happy to be doing all of it with Gabriel. He texted her four times that night, and she had to tell him to stop, and then turned off her phone.

    On Tuesday, they were going to be touring UCSF, with Stephanie as their guide. And suddenly, thinking about it made her sad. If she moved to France with Gabriel, she would be leaving UCSF soon. It was going to be like leaving home. The thought of giving up her job frightened her. Who would she be without her role at UCSF? It would be like losing a limb. And what if she didn’t find a good job as a foreigner in France? There was so much to think about. She had nightmares about it that night.





Chapter Sixteen


The administrative setup of San Francisco’s emergency services was complicated but no more so than the elaborate system in France. Each country had their own way of dividing up vital services and deciding who should run them. In San Francisco, the Department of Emergency Management, the DEM, was responsible for planning, preparedness, communication, response, and recovery for daily emergencies and major disasters like the “multiple casualty incident” at the lycée in Paris. The DEM was the bridge between the public and first responders, and provided all the key coordination with city departments. It was originally known as the Office of Emergency Services, and other branches of emergency communications had merged with it, all under the umbrella of the DEM, which was run by an executive director and three deputy directors. When necessary, the DEM brought the Emergency Operations Center into action to support field operations and provide public information, among other functions. They had their own deputy director.

    The DEM building was on Turk Street in the Tenderloin among the derelicts and drug addicts, not far from where the French team was staying in Union Square.

Marie-Laure, Paul, and Gabriel arrived together by cab at the DEM. Valérie came with Tom, and the American team met them there. Two out of three of the deputy directors had come. The executive director welcomed the French representatives and congratulated them on their handling of the lycée shooting, which had been a tragedy but could have been even worse, as the professionals knew, despite the rabble-rousing of the press and Jacqueline Moutier.

They discussed it for a few minutes, and each of the deputy directors spoke, explaining how the system of first responders worked, and what systems were in place for a major natural disaster like an earthquake, or a terrorist attack. Everything had been thought through with great care, equipment was state of the art, their approach was constantly updated, and manpower was strong. It was an efficient department and the French were impressed. It was a remarkably smooth operation that had been impeccably implemented. They also explained how the various hospitals in the Bay Area were used, and how triage was determined and by whom. They were scheduled to see the four most important hospitals in the next few weeks, as well as the Saint Francis Burn Center, which was a very important facility and had been crucial in the recent hotel fire in January.

The informational session continued until lunchtime, when the directors left them, and they were driven to a very good new restaurant South of Market, before moving on to SF General after lunch.

They were all fascinated by how different it was from France. It was more mechanized and systematized in the United States, in contrast to the many official protocols in France and the more traditional system there, run with less manpower, since they had less. The French system was very closely linked with the police and riot squads, since terrorism was unfortunately more common in France, although that could change, as one of the deputy directors pointed out. In the case of terrorism in the United States, the FBI and Homeland Security became involved. They had more departments to draw on and more staff.

    “Everything is bigger in the United States,” Gabriel commented, very impressed by what they’d seen so far. He conferred about it at length with Marie-Laure over lunch. Both cities and countries had much to learn from each other, which was the whole point of the exchange. They all felt enriched by what they’d heard.