When an Oakland Hills Home Caught Fire Near Closed Station, the Response Was Slow

Just after 1 a.m. Wednesday, Adrienne Bracks was awoken by a call from her neighbor in the Oakland Hills.

“He called us and said, ‘Get up. The house is on fire next to you,’” she recalled, standing outside the charred ruins of the building two days later.

With her husband, Anthony, and dogs in tow, she hurried out to the street, where neighbors were already connecting their garden hoses, throwing water on the pavement and checking their watches, waiting for firefighters to come.

The crew didn’t arrive for more than 10 minutes.

“It wasn’t sinking in,” Bracks, who has lived in her home on Lochard Street for 27 years, told KQED. “I helped get our hose hooked up so that we could put water here. Within 10 minutes, it was just up in flames.”

Lochard Street is in the Chabot Park neighborhood, less than one mile from Oakland’s Fire Station 28, which shuttered along with another station in the Oakland Hills on Jan. 6 to cut costs amid the city’s budget crisis. Fire officials have warned that the closures would hinder their ability to respond to emergency calls quickly and could be dangerous for residents.

“Chabot Park, Sequoia, Noland Park, Joaquin Miller, Oakmoor, Skyline, Grass Valley, Woodminster, Lincoln Highlands and Crestmont — hear this clearly: if you live in any of those neighborhoods, be aware that you’ll be waiting a very long time for help,” firefighters union chief Seth Olyer said at a press conference when the closures began last week.

“You will not quickly have firefighter paramedics to help you or your family, and what could have been a small blaze or a small fire near your house will become a conflagration, leaving tragedy in its wake,” he continued.

Wednesday’s fire, though it did not cause any injuries, underscored those warnings, said Olyer, who has pointed out that usual response times are four minutes or less.

The blaze was “a clear indication that this is a matter of life and death,” Olyer said.

Station 28 and Station 25, near Joaquin Miller Park, shuttered along with another station that was already closed as part of $130 million in spending cuts Oakland is making in the face of a massive budget shortfall. Unless new funding becomes available in the next few weeks, four more stations will shutter in February, leaving seven of the city’s 28 firehouses out of commission through the end of the fiscal year in June.

James Donohoe, who lives on the other side of the home destroyed by Wednesday’s fire, said his neighbors are now worried about the six months ahead.

“If you’re up here on any other day, the wind comes through here, sometimes it feels like a fricking hurricane,” he said, looking out at Chabot Park, which created a wind tunnel behind his hillside house. “If there had been wind, for sure my house would be gone. And I think probably this whole community would still be on fire.”

Fearful Oakland Hills residents have spent decades hardening their homes, improving vegetation management and fighting for city funding since the Tunnel Fire destroyed more than two miles of residential neighborhoods and killed 25 people in 1991. But the area’s high winds, tightly nestled houses and routine fluctuation between rainy and bone-dry has inherent risks.

“There’s so many fallen trees,” Donohoe said, pointing at a tangle of chopped eucalyptus trees and dead brush about 300 yards from his house. “Even though we’ve had a lot of rain and there’s a lot of green, underneath that green, there’s a lot of dried pine needles, et cetera. There’s a lot of fuel here.”

He said the community is anxious over the closed stations, especially as he and neighbors watch the Eaton and Palisades fires devastate similar neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area in recent weeks. Many are now worried about losing insurance coverage, or are frantically looking for a new provider after being dropped.

“We know that if we were going to lose our home, it would be a devastating financial loss,” Donohoe said. Even though he has insurance, he said it wouldn’t cover the cost to rebuild. “We’re both high school teachers, so we don’t make a whole bunch of money. We’re good, but when we think of retirement, that’s our nest egg.”

City Council members have said they are working to restore fire services and prevent more cuts, but those decisions are largely in the hands of city staff. The budget that the council approved in July included a contingency that was triggered when the sale of Oakland’s stake in the Coliseum was delayed in September.

That sale was stalled for months as the developers seeking to buy the stadium worked with Alameda County to purchase the other 50% stake from the A’s, but a vote on Tuesday committed the body to reaching a deal within a month.

Although the first available funding from Oakland’s sale is earmarked to reopen the fire stations, it will still be tied up in escrow until closing.

“It has been our argument and a number of elected officials’ argument with the city administrator and the budget director that waiting for the money to show up in a Brinks truck before any actions are taken and before any sort of firehouses are opened is not the way to run a city that is currently hurting and in need of public safety,” Olyer said.