Is San Diego better prepared today for the type of disaster that happened a year ago?

Absolutely yes. In my State of the City address last January, I outlined a five-point program to improve fire protection. We have made progress on all five points.

Let me go through them. One was to increase the number of fire personnel. We added a few firefighters in this year's budget.

Two, we said we needed a significant upgrade in fire coding. This year we invested $10 million in new equipment for the Fire Department. Some of that was taken from CCDC (Centre City Development Corp.).

And what kind of new equipment will that be? It will be spent on the year-round fire helicopter that's now the city's. It will be spent on new fire trucks, new mobile data terminals and radios and hoses and all those kinds of things.

And if you want that in detail, I can. It doesn't solve the equipment problem but it's a dramatic increase from what had been done in the past. Third, related to that, is that we have our own fire-rescue helicopter now, the city's own, which is year-round.

Four, we began ... more.

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