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Driven by unrelenting winds, in just three days — Sunday, Monday, Tuesday; October 20, 21 and 22 of 1991 — the fire became the most destructive “Wildland-Urban Interface” (W.U.I.) fire in California's history up until then, with an estimated $1.5 billion in damage in 1991 dollars; over $3.5 billion in today's dollars.

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The devastating "Hills Fire," aka, the "Oakland hills firestorm", and "The Tunnel Fire" by CalFire, spurred the creation of the Hills Conservation Network by a group of residents — among them several whose homes were destroyed in the fire, and one whose aged mother was trapped by and killed in the fire.  They were impassioned and determined to cut through the usual politics and bureaucracy, get an accurate, honest and transparent analysis, and publicize the truth of the fire’s origin and causes.  Only then could the necessary changes be made to prevent another future disastrous fire for future generations. 

SEVERAL OFFICIAL REPORTS on the 1991 Hills Fire were commissioned and released in 1992, including the Berkeley & Oakland Mayor’s Task Force, one by FEMA (The Federal Emergency Management Agency of the federal government), and a one by the former Chief of Fire Prevention of the Oakland Army Base, David Maloney.  Two more reports are also referenced later on this site: one by the U.S. Forest Service in September, 2018, and another by Fire Science Lab researcher Jack Cohen.

5 OFFICIAL REPORTS AGREE ON THESE 1991 Hills Fire FACTS:

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In the aftermath of the Hills Fire, the HCN's founding members lobbied long and hard for these critical improvements for neighborhood fire safety, including:  Today, fire hydrants are universally accessible.  Water pumps have been undergrounded, making them resilient to wildfires.   Many houses which had made few if any recommended preparations to deter home ignition, like removing flammable, dry vegetation from roofs, gutters and near houses, have now done so.  "Defensible space" is now routinely advised by our fire agencies and our municipalities.

 

READ NBC NEWS detailed REPORT of the fire: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Remembering-the-Oakland-Firestorm-132282138.html

 

However, in the years and decades since 1991, some “native” plant extremists have distorted the truth or simply lied about the Hills Fire to blame and target specific species of trees they have for years wanted to cut down, for purely aesthetic reasons, by the tens of thousands.  They realized they could advance this agenda by exploiting fears of another wildfire.

 

Not content to simply plant trees and plants they prefer, some native plant extremists advise cutting down thousands of healthy trees, claiming they pose a unique fire danger, despite no scientific literature supporting this claim.  Trees and even entire forests covering acres are treated like weeds in a garden.  The term "weed" is itself a term without botanical definition.  It means simply a plant one does not want in the garden.  But in Oakland and Berkeley forests, this “weeding” of trees is done on a colossal scale with chainsaws and bulldozers clearing hillsides of healthy forests over 100 years old.  As a result, hillsides are destabilized, ecosystems are destroyed, windbreaks and fog-capturing stands of tree that mitigate wind-driven fires are destroyed, along with precious wildlife habit.

 

This miguided ecological damage is then compounded: toxic herbicides are regularly applied to unwanted plants and stumps of cut trees to prevent their regrowth.  In the three decades since the Hills Fire, extensive deforestation has been done in the name of “fire danger mitigation” and "habitat restoration."  Deforestation is neither.  Cutting down forests is the opposite, both INCREASING wildfire danger  and destroying wild habitats.  Forests in the East Bay Hills , like forests everywhere, dramatically increase the moisture of area in myriad ways.  READ "Trees & forests VS. chaparral & grasslands.

 

More recently, HCN has been succesful in educating the public and discouraging agencies, institutions and municipalities from various policies of targeting trees by species under the guise of fire danger mitigation.  Monterey pine, acacia and eucalyptus trees have been erroneously blamed for the size or ferocity of the 1991 Hills fire, despite these trees having no more significant role in the fire than other trees species.  (As detailed in the reports referenced above.)  A far greater contributor to the blaze was the quick ignition of houses themselves, which were more flammable with their dry lumber, paints and solvents, gas lines, etc), and burn hotter than trees.

 

Healthy trees of any species are not fire hazards, but instead provide ecological services that also reduce wildfire risk by reducing the overall temperature of a landscape and dramatically increasing its moisture content, fog generation and annual fog drip rainfall.  READ MORE ABOUT FIRE DANGER of forests compared to shrubs, grasslands, chaparral.

 

Perhaps most important, trees of all species are invaluable for their ability to sequester carbon in our current era of anthropogenic climate change.  And as always, tree provide numerous other essential ecological services, including stabilizing steep East Bay (and Bay Area) hillsides, and creating land-cooling shade, especially in our hot, dry summer and autumn, and providing far more wildlife habitat than so-called “native” chaparral.  In fact, chapparal like coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis), is more flammable than trees.   Both are in fact pyrophytic, meaning they have evolved to not only survive fire, but benefit from it.  Fire itself, as more fire ecologists and biologists have been writing and speaking about in recent years, provides the essential ecological function of renewing forests.  Our challenge is to apply simple methods to make our homes and structures in and near forests igntion-resistant, not cut forests down.  READ MORE.

 

If you’ve ever heard eucalyptus trees described as “flammable,” “hazardous,” or “dangerous,” this, too, is a claim without scientific basis. It's a chilling example of how a lie repeated often enough, by people with an entirely different agenda than wildfire mitigation, can become perceived as truth by an unsuspecting public and an underformed media.

 

In fact, California bay laurel trees contain more “volatile” (aka “essential”) oils than do eucalyptus trees.  Bay trees also grow closer to the ground so they can be more easily be ignited than taller, stout-trunked eucalyptus trees by grass and chaparral fires common in the hills.  So bay trees could be labeled more “flammable” than eucalyptus or some other tree species, but this misses the larger point that all living trees are more resistant to ignition in a wildfire than grasses and smaller plants without thick, fire-resistant trunks.

 

Pine and eucalyptus trees, like redwoods, bays and oaks all burned in the Hills firestorm, and therefore all generated firebrands.  So did the ignited houses and other structures — and these dried building materials burned even faster and hotter than any living (green, moist) vegetation.  This is why the man-made structures next door to your house, especially if within the 100 feet of your Defensible Space, are likely a greater fire risk to your house than any plants or trees.  This is why HCN endorses a combination of individual and community wildfire preparedness, HERE.

 

Human judgment, including by homeowners, and poor fire preparedness planning by our officials, were more responsible for the fire’s catastrophic result than trees were.  All this is detailed in the official reports on the 1991 Hills fire referenced above, and available for interested readers, here:

 

READ THESE CRITICAL REPORTS about the 1991 Hills Fire, and wildfire and vegetation in general:

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• 1991 FEMA (Federal Emergency Mangement Agency) Report: CLICK HERE
 

• 1992 Oakland-Berkeley Mayor’s Report: CLICK HERE
 

• 2009 Maloney Report CLICK HERE
 

• Fire Science Lab report, "The Wildland Interface Fire Problem," by Jack Cohen: CLICK HERE