{"id":424215,"date":"2026-08-05T05:54:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T05:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/424215\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T05:54:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T05:54:22","slug":"sfs-july-4-chaos-bad-planning-dead-waymos-and-1000-people-waiting-for-a-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/424215\/","title":{"rendered":"SF\u2019s July 4 chaos: Bad planning, dead Waymos, and 1,000 people waiting for a bus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published Aug. 4, 2026at6:00amUpdated Aug. 4, 2026at10:09am<\/p>\n

On the evening of July 4, a group of San Francisco officials gathered in the Emergency Operations Center at 49 South Van Ness to head off potential disaster, as they do during any major public event.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Representatives from the Fire Department, the Coast Guard, the Department of Emergency Management, and PG&E sat in the nondescript conference room, and the mayor\u2019s office was on call. A guest sat at the table: a Waymo employee, there to streamline communications with the city if the company\u2019s robotaxis caused trouble.<\/p>\n

After December\u2019s blackout,<\/a> the brain trust was hoping to avoid another round of chaos. Instead, the following few hours of disarray would lead to another set of hearings, probes, and demands for answers from Waymo, emergency officials, and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. The EOC was supposed to stay open until midnight; it didn\u2019t close until 2:30 a.m.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fireworks show, launched from the Golden Gate Bridge, drew more than 100,000 people. Unfortunately, those hoping for a spectacular 250th birthday celebration found their view shrouded by fog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published Aug. 4, 2026at6:00amUpdated Aug. 4, 2026at10:09am On the evening of July 4, a group of San Francisco…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2007,79045,4035,11917,5434,101,4773,103,102,104,106,105,5449],"class_list":["post-424215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-ai","tag-department-of-emergency-management","tag-fireworks","tag-golden-gate-bridge","tag-marina","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-fire-department","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sfmta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}