San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin apologized Tuesday for harsh comments he made about the city’s fire chief while her department was still battling a large structure fire in North Beach over the weekend.
Peskin’s apology followed the release of a minute-by-minute timeline of the department’s response to the Sunday blaze, which contradicted some of Peskin’s earlier assertions and appeared to confirm the department’s appropriate response to the fire.
"I apologize to Chief Hayes-White, and I intend to personally convey this to her as soon as I return from the spring legislative recess," Peskin said in a statement Tuesday.
Just 48 hours earlier, Peskin -- who has clashed with city departments previously -- called the response “an abject failure of the Fire Department.”
Peskin said it took a half hour for firefighters to pour water on the blaze -- an assertion disputed by the official timeline. The supervisor was already calling for Chief Joanne Hayes-White’s ouster Sunday, slamming her for not answering his phone calls (he says they went straight to a mailbox that was full.) The chief has said she was busy assisting fire personnel on scene as they battled the blaze.
San Francisco officials, including Acting Mayor Mark Farrell, quickly rallied around the chief.
“While there is a live four-alarm fire burning it is inappropriate for anybody to criticize how the professional firefighters of the SFFD, with decades of experience, are handling the situation,” Farrell said in a statement. “The valiant efforts of the San Francisco Fire Department speaks for itself,” Farrell said. “No lives were lost and no civilian injuries occurred.”