SFO Legal Action: Round 1 Summary

About 20 of us made the trek down to the Redwood City courthouse on Tuesday to present our case for damages against SFO airport (and by extension the city of SF who owns and operates it).  You can catch up on the background of this story here and here.

Over the course of two and a half hours in the morning and another couple hours in the afternoon, we presented the context for the complaint (delivered by the awesome Sally Meakin) and a number of simply heart-wrenching stories about how the runway noise has affected people.  We heard about visiting grandchildren waking up in the middle of the night thinking we had an earthquake, we heard about European friends who are reluctant to visit due to the noise and, for me, the most difficult one to listen to was the B'game woman who has decided NOT to have corrective hearing surgery in one ear so that she can sleep on the other side and actually sleep.  I felt so sorry for her, but it actually makes sense.

The judge asked one speaker for a specific example of how the noise affected her. Without hesitation, she described how when she goes out for a walk, other dog-walking neighbors are all wearing headphones to try to block out the noise. Later, when we got more details on SF’s defense dates, the speaker commented, “How can there be a defense? How do you defend something that’s ruining our lives?’

A motion-sensitive alarm device in someone’s driveway that’s worked without a problem for years is now triggered by the roar of the back blast.

We learned a few things along the way.  As we are in small claims court, the only thing Judge Cristina Mazzei can do is award monetary damages.  She cannot order SFO to do (or not do) anything.  Assigning an amount to each claim would be a bit of an art which is why we are asking for a uniform $2,500 each.  The airport will present its defense when all of us are finished.  At the morning break that was set for May 21st in the afternoon, but it is still a bit up in the air.  As I type this in the early afternoon of Mother's Day, the roar is on-going and I'm sure a number of families are choosing not to be outside when they normally would be enjoying a lovely day.

Comments

[Ted Yun]

Great summary Joe. Hopefully we will make some headway in this case.

Here is a link to the video I made where I took a screen capture from 7:33 pm to 1 am on May 2 of the Volans airport monitoring site that has the planes landing and taking off, and incorporates the readings from the noise monitoring stations around the Peninsula. I synchronized the video to my audio that I recorded, then overlaid the waveform.

Most of the spikes you see are from the back blast. You can move the cursor to a large spike and correlate it with the noise level from the Burlingame monitors and to the planes taking off.

You can see that most of the back blasts are in the high 50's and some are in the mid-60's. 65 dB is an arbitrary threshold that airports use to classify as "too loud."

https://youtu.be/VS3fsACns8U

[Sally Meakin]

Joe, you are a better listener than I. I didn't hear that lady's comments about the hearing aid. Thank you for inserting that in today's article. Our group is so articulate, open, honest, and like-minded that I hope Judge Mazzei is convinced that the runway noise that began over 3 years ago is an ongoing nuisance, harmful, and will award us this modest payment we're requesting. For your many readers who support what we're doing: please go to sforunwaynoise.com for the first noncommittal step. The more who participate, the more credible we become. Joe, I'm going to email your article to Hillsborough Mayor Shaun Christianson now. Thank you for YOUR efforts, Mr. Baylock.

[Sally Meakin]

SHAWN, not Shaun.

[Peter Garrison]

Last night: Back blasts 1-2 am.
Time for a sit-in.

[jennifer Pfaff]

Joe and Sally, thanks for your work on this. In case you haven't seen today's POST (Mon. May 20), you may be interested in the front page involving Palo Alto and SFO: City Battles FAA Over Flight Path (unfortunately, not online...) re "Pirat Star Two" flight path expansion.