KGO's I-Team

By Hunter Jackson

› news@sfbg.com

TV news reporters aren't usually thought of as prying investigative journalists. But the work of Dan Noyes and producers Beth Rimbey and Ken Miguel of KGO-TV's I-Team on San Francisco's disaster plan last fall raised crucial questions about the city's emergency preparedness. In the process they touched some raw nerves and landed themselves on the wrong side of the Mayor's Office.

Prompted by the London subway bombings last summer, the I-Team began looking into San Francisco's disaster plan. What if something similar happened here? Would we be prepared to deal with it? After requesting and digging through public documents from the Office of Emergency Services and Homeland Security (OES&HS), Noyes and his team concluded the plan was incomplete.

The investigation led to more digging and further inquiries regarding the competence of OES&HS executive director Annemarie Conroy — who, like former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown, has little experience in emergency management — and the effectiveness of the city's allegedly flawed emergency siren. Taken together, the series reveals the extent to which San Francisco, a city located on a major, active earthquake fault line, is unprepared for a disaster.

The information wasn't easy to come by. From the beginning, according to Rimbey, the team was received with trepidation and routed through the Mayor's Office. The Mayor's communications director Peter Ragone rejects this allegation, but Noyes maintains that Mayor Gavin Newsom's administration has been less than cooperative. He claims the OES&HS was surprisingly hesitant to release records and turned to technicalities to make things more difficult for the I-Team. In fact, Noyes says, they still have not received files requested as early as July, records that are supposed to be public. Attorneys on both sides are now involved in the dispute.

"Over all the years of doing this stuff, we've made a lot of FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests," says Noyes, who has been a journalist for 25 years. "I've never had someone be so reluctant to give up what's public. This is the worst example I've seen, ever, of public officials who refuse to give up public documents."

Running up against a wall strengthened the determination of Noyes, Rimbey, and Miguel, and at the same time made it clear they were on to something. "They made it worse for themselves because the more they tried to deflect, the more it seemed like there was something going on they didn't want to talk about," Miguel says.

The evasive tactics used by City Hall did not end with withholding documents. "Newsom and his people made it clear to all city departments that if they're dealing with us, they've got to keep us at arm's length," Noyes claims. "City departments aren't allowed to talk to us directly or deal with us directly without the Mayor's Office being involved."

The relationship between the I-Team and the Mayor's Office has reached a point where Noyes says Newsom won't sit down with him for an interview or allow him to interview OES&HS's Conroy. More generally, the team believes the station received unofficial sanctions. "Other reporters have shown up to do their jobs at press conferences and were told, 'We don't deal with Channel 7,' " Rimbey says.

The I-Team says the Mayor's Office accuses them of having an agenda, which they strongly deny. "We're basically just asking the questions the public asks. It's nothing personal," Noyes says. "We've got no agenda — we just know a good story when we see one."

Ragone disagrees with the I-Team's characterization of the response of the Mayor's Office to their investigation, as well as to the findings of the reports themselves. "The series was severely flawed and ignored basic and objective facts that were part of the public record," he wrote in an e-mail, which was how he insisted on dealing with questions from the Guardian. "In truth, the city's OES was well on its way to taking concrete steps to improve preparedness long before Dan Noyes's reporting. A cursory review of the public record would have made that clear."

Yet Ragone did not cite any of the inaccuracies that he's alleging, nor did he respond to our request that he do so. And the I-Team stands by its reports, has not aired any corrections, and maintains the Mayor's Office has not pointed out any specific factual problems with the series.

The I-Team plans to keep on asking the hard questions and digging through mountains of public records. "Asking for this information is important," Noyes says. "You've got to have open government — if it's not open, there are some serious problems for the future." *