On Aug.4, the National City City Council unanimously approved a resolution ratifying the city manager’s execution of the memorandum of understanding between the city of National City and the San Diego Unified Port District for the city’s administration of programs for residents impacted by the fire aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard.
The vote also advances the city manager’s execution of the MOU between the city and 211 San Diego for program services, authorizing the acceptance of $200,000 from the Port and the establishment of a $200,000 General Fund appropriation and corresponding revenue budget for the administration of the programs.
On July 12, the USS Bonhomme Richard caught fire during regular repairs at Naval Base San Diego. It took until July 16 for firefighters to fully extinguish all fires aboard the vessel. During the incident, significant smoke was released into the air that affected neighborhoods surrounding the naval base, particularly in the city of San Diego and National City.
Both cities partnered with the Port of San Diego to create a temporary two-phase program to provide relief to households most affected by air pollution emitted by the fire in the 91950, 92113 and 92102 ZIP codes: National City, San Diego’s Barrio Logan, Logan Heights and the Southcrest neighborhoods.
On July 14, Port commissioners unanimously approved and allocated $200,000 for a two-phase program being administered through the city of National City. Phase one of the program provided up to 400 households in both cities up to two nights in a hotel to provide relief from the smoke. Vouchers for the hotel rooms were offered on a first come, first served basis and distributed by 211 San Diego for July 15-16.
Council member Ron Morrison said it would be interesting to find out what ZIP codes those residents came from due to the $400 per night rooms given out.
“We know that all of the hotels were in the city of San Diego, so all of the tax money and business money went to the city of San Diego. It would be interesting to know where that breakdown is occurring,” said Morrison. “And we also have a hotel on city property with the Port of San Diego and that airflow did not flow to the south. Our hotel down here was not in the contamination ring. There should be a little bit of sharing on this stuff.”
The second phase of the program will provide the purchase and provision of residential air filtration systems for residents located in indicated zip codes Details will be announced with funding remaining from the allocation of the hotel rooms, with the Environmental Health Coalition serving as the program partner to help distribute air filtration to qualifying households.
Assistant City Manager Tony Winney said as far as the hotel rooms, half of the funds went to National City and the other to San Diego. He said that staff is currently working on reconciling those invoices so they can provide the breakdown of zip codes to council.
