Fire Mitigation in the East Bay

Coastal California has a big advantage when it comes to growing vegetation – just about any plant, from anywhere will grow and thrive here. Ironically, this is also a disadvantage. Frequently “exotics,” (non-native species) out-compete the native plants and take-over. The exotics, like other unwelcome house guests, have undesirable habits, like dying, drying out and exploding into flames. This was part of the problem with the recent Los Angeles fires. In the Eastern San Francisco Bay Area (East Bay) we have been dealing with similar disasters for many years.

More than a century ago, entrepreneur Anthony Chabot cultivated a eucalyptus grove in the Oakland hills, with the lumber transported across Skyline Boulevard to the Port of Oakland for homebuilding throughout the Bay Area.

But now, the clusters of dead, overgrown eucalyptus, oak and bay trees in Anthony Chabot Regional Park, the same trees used to build the railroad and Victorian homes, present the biggest wildfire threat to Oakland, Berkeley and Castro Valley, according to the East Bay Regional Park District, and we have been here before.

The Oakland firestorm of 1991 was a large suburban wildland–urban interface conflagration that occurred on the hillsides of Oakland, and Berkeley California. The fire ultimately killed 25 people and injured 150 others. The 1,520 acres destroyed included 2,843 single-family dwellings and 437 apartment and condominium units. The economic loss from the fire was estimated at $1.5 billion.