Remembering the Oakland Hills Fire
Today is the 20th anniversary of the Oakland Hills Fire that destroyed over 3000 private dwellings and claimed the lives of 25 people. This particular disaster has always had a special meaning for me as I was part of the FEMA team sent to provide relief to the survivors. The smoke was so thick in the sky above my home in western San Francisco that we thought that the fire had to have been in our neighborhood. My children followed the disaster on television and for the first time started to understand what I did when I left them for those long "business" trips. I still remember the fire whenever I pass through the Caldecott tunnel.
As usually happens after these things, there was a lot of rhetoric and grand plans for mitigation so that something like this would never happen again. I wish it was so. While there have been improvements (the fire hydrants have been standardized, for example) and the California Standardized Emergency Management System was developed to address coordination problems, the area is still at high risk. The homes have been rebuilt bigger and cover more area, eliminating what little defensible space was there. But at least the wood shingles have been replaced by fire-resistant materials. Roads are still narrow and illegal parking is tolerated, making it difficult or impossible for fire apparatus to respond to major fire.
So have we really come all that far in 20 years? Sadly, more could have been done. I think the emergency services have done their best to address the tactical issues and certainly SEMS changed for the better how we do respond in the state. But these efforts have been frustrated by the desire of residents to rebuild bigger and better and their focus on personal satisfaction without consideration of the larger issue of regional safety. Or do we blame the governments who didn't push more for mitigation?
But when the fires start and people are dying, does it really matter whose fault it was?
I belieive this is still the worst destruction by fire of residences in US history. Perhaps Chicago fire in 19th Century worse.