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The Oakland Hills Burned Before. LA Fires Have Many Terrified It Will Happen Again

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David and Nancy Kessler recall how their lives changed when they lost their home in the Oakland Hills in the blaze of 1991, as they stand in the main part of their home on Vicente Drive, on Jan. 13, 2025. They eventually rebuilt their home with fire-hardened measures and David has become the Chair of the North Hills Community Association. (David M. Barreda/KQED)

As he drives the streets that wind through the Claremont Hills, David Kessler points out sites that burned nearly 35 years ago.

The house that one family and their baby narrowly evacuated after a neighbor rattled them awake; the reservoir on Drury Road that failed as pumps burned up, drying out the garden hose his wife, Nancy, was using to ward off flames; the now-overgrown hillsides and new builds that David walked straight through in the days after the Oakland Hills firestorm.

David and Nancy’s was one of nearly 3,500 homes lost in that deadly blaze in October 1991.

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Now, watching wind-whipped wildfires devastate Los Angeles, they’re among the residents of the hills who worry about when another could strike here and how prepared the city will be.

When the wind roars, “it wakes up,” Nancy said. “It’s loud, and it certainly triggers [thoughts of] ‘Uh-oh, this is bad.’”

The Golden Gate, as seen from Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve, on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. This area was spared from severe damage during the Oakland Hills fire in 1991, possibly due to its unique terrain and moist wind coming east from the Golden Gate. (David M. Barreda/KQED)

Northern California has mostly steered clear of fire risk this month thanks to a rainy November and December. But a second round of dry winds, known as the Santa Anas in Southern California and Diablos here, are drying out the brush and vegetation in the East Bay Hills, and as fire officials have warned repeatedly in recent weeks, there is no longer an off-season when it comes to wildfire.

Alternating periods of abundant rain and drought, homes nestled in hilly terrain, dry winds that howl through the canyons — many of the factors driving the disaster in Los Angeles are all too familiar to residents of the Oakland Hills. They have given rise to heightened concern, but also a concerted effort to better prepare the community for fire in the decades since 1991.

“You can feel the wind right now,” Elizabeth Stage said from her deck overlooking Oakland’s Claremont Canyon on Monday. The ’91 firestorm, formally known as the Tunnel Fire, narrowly missed her home on Alvarado Drive, stopping just two houses up the street.

“It doesn’t have to be a Diablo wind, it just has to be a steady wind like this that’s drying out the vegetation. And in the high winds, embers can go a couple of miles,” she continued.

Elizabeth Stage, president of the Oakland Fire Safe Council, talks about the 1991 Oakland Firestorm/Tunnel Fire, in her home on Alvarado Road, above Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve, on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (David M. Barreda/KQED)

When the wind picks up or a red flag warning is issued, she tests the batteries on the flashlights in her bedroom and car, pulls out her go-bag to add clothes and refill out-of-date medications, and reminds herself how to open her garage door without power.

Stage, who is the president of the grassroots Oakland Firesafe Council, has also invested in hardening her home, adding a fireproof deck, double-pane sliding glass doors and cement siding near her gutters.

The Kesslers now keep their passports and birth certificates in a carry case by the front door, ready to grab at a moment’s notice year-round. In ’91, they lost Nancy’s family Bible, which had been passed down for 200 years, and portraits David’s mother painted of him throughout his childhood.

Over the past few weeks, they’ve also been trimming trees and taking out plants on their property that have grown too close to their home.

David Kessler searches for a postcard of a painting by his mother in a filing cabinet in his home on Vicente Drive on Jan. 13, 2025. He and his wife lost almost all of their belongings, including a number of original paintings by his mother. (David M. Barreda/KQED)

“We took out this rose that Nancy went to Santa Rosa to get 20 years ago,” David said. “We’ll probably have to trim that oleander some, it’s probably too close to the house.”

The work, never-ending labor for many here, is a reminder that the hills remain vulnerable decades after the Tunnel Fire.

“The topography hasn’t changed,” said Dan Robertson, a retired firefighter who lives above Montclair Park. “Historically, the portion of the Oakland Hills that burned during the firestorm in ‘91 has burned similarly about once every 20 to 30 years. It’ll take a combination of factors and some things are definitely better, but I think really people don’t understand how fast these things can happen and move in the right conditions and right situations.”

A more fire-resilient community

Fire danger looms in the minds of people in the East Bay Hills because it can and likely will happen again, Robertson said.

Still, he pointed out, circumstances have changed since ’91, and the city has worked to better prepare the area for disaster.

Shot from a helicopter, photographer Robert Eplett captured this image of dozens of burned-down homes and scorched trees after the 1991 fire in the Oakland Hills. (Courtesy Robert Eplett)

One way the East Bay differs from L.A. is the network of community advocacy groups residents have built since the Tunnel Fire, Stage said. The Oakland Firesafe Council, which she leads, promotes public safety improvements, along with the North Hills Community Association, which David chairs, and Claremont Canyon Conservancy.

“Look up your address and see how many fire-safe councils are within 10 miles of you, and then look at my sister’s address down in L.A. and see how many are within 10 miles of her,” Stage said. “She’s on the boundary of L.A., right by Culver City. There’s one in Newport.”

They’ve taught homeowners ways to harden their homes and clear out risky vegetation. All of the Kesslers’ neighbors have upgraded to grade-A fire-safe roofs, they said.

California’s fire departments have also improved mutual aid since the ’90s. Before the Keller Fire broke out close to Interstate 580 in October, California’s Office of Emergency Services had pre-positioned a strike team in strategic locations in the hills, and the Oakland Fire Department had sent crews on roving patrols, according to spokesperson Michael Hunt.

Fire crews respond to the Keller Fire in Oakland on Oct. 18, 2024. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)

While Oakland has grappled with cuts to public safety services in the face of a massive city deficit, Hunt said the Fire Department’s roaming patrols will continue on all red flag days “no matter the budget.”

OFD also opened Station 7 in the northern Oakland Hills in 1999 and — until the latest round of budget cuts — had reopened Station 28 near Joaquin Miller Park, which Robertson recalls was closed during the Tunnel Fire.

In November, Oakland also passed Measure MM, which will fund a vegetation management plan designed to reduce wildfire risk across 1,900 acres of city property and 300 miles of roadside.

Stage, who spearheaded the effort, said the annual $99 parcel tax will remove brush and flammable, dead and dying trees within 100 feet of roadsides and increase the presence of grazing goats, which munch on vegetation in the steep hills, among other prevention efforts.

Hunt said that money would likely become available in July and would fund efforts starting next winter and spring.

More complicated evacuation efforts

As residents and officials take steps to prevent another disaster in the Oakland Hills, they face some challenges that didn’t exist in 1991.

For one, more people are living in the hillside neighborhoods than there were three decades ago. Stage told KQED that while door-knocking for MM, she learned that many households had also become multigenerational, and even some groups of UC Berkeley students were renting in the Claremont Hills.

Residents also generally have more, bigger cars, which can slow evacuations. Stage said if every household took just one car, it would go fairly smoothly, but people seldom want to risk leaving their vehicles to burn.

“This was supposed to be one of our neighbor’s son’s college education,” David Kessler said, pointing to a photograph of his neighbor waving from a red sedan in an album he keeps from the years just before and after the Tunnel Fire. “He was supposed to pay for it with that little sports car, but it didn’t happen.”

Personal photographs of David and Nancy Kessler’s residence seen after they lost their home in the Oakland Hills in the blaze of 1991 on Vicente Driv, on Jan. 13, 2025. (David M. Barreda/KQED)

The Oakland Firesafe Council is hoping to get an evacuation message out this month, urging people to learn a few routes they can take out of the hills, depending on where a blaze starts, and to take just one vehicle in an emergency.

“The best thing you can do is when you hear that National Weather Service or whomsoever is forecasting the likelihood of high fire conditions, if you are mobility impaired in any way, if you have three children and a dog and grandma to get down the hill, etc., — just go visit a relative, just get out of dodge,” Stage told KQED.

The council is also helping parking enforcement crackdown on visitors who park along the streets’ sides — many of which are designated no-parking zones and fire lanes — but even without vehicles lining them, many of the roadways are extremely narrow.

“People underestimate how big a fire truck is driving around these streets,” Robertson said. “Parking rules and enforcing parking laws is one thing, but the streets were designed when cars were much smaller and people didn’t have as many.”

Budget cuts hamper plans

Meanwhile, a budget crisis at City Hall has forced some cost-saving measures at the Fire Department, prompting dire warnings from firefighters about their ability to respond to an emergency in the hills.

Three stations in Oakland are currently closed, and four more could shutter next month as the city slashes spending across departments to cure a nearly $130 million budget deficit. Residents are pressuring officials to restore the fire services.

A dry rain gauge sits on the front deck of Elizabeth Stage’s home on Alvarado Road, above Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve, on Jan. 13, 2025. (David M. Barreda/KQED)

“Closing four more firehouses would be the end of fire protection as we know it in Oakland,” said Councilmember Zac Unger, who led the city firefighters union before retiring to take his City Council seat this month. “There is no way to close seven firehouses and not have devastating impacts on both the citizens and on firefighter safety.”

Funding from the sale of the Oakland Coliseum is earmarked to reopen the fire stations when it becomes available, but the deal has been stalled as the developers seeking to buy the stadium work with Alameda County on their plan to buy the other 50% stake from the A’s.

A vote on Tuesday committed the body to reaching a deal within a month, but if that goes through, Oakland’s funds will still be tied up in escrow until closing.

In the meantime, David Kessler sticks to the belief that his house won’t burn down twice. But he also knows well that it isn’t invincible.

“It’s kind of like no one person can start a nuclear war,” he said. “One person can start a huge fire, one arsonist or one careless person can just destroy a whole neighborhood and kill people. Because when it’s dry and the wind is blowing, the fire starts, it’s almost impossible to put it out.”

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