Featured events- 08/28/2013 - Free Outdoor Screening in the BAM/PFA Sculpture Garden
- 08/27/2013 - MARK EPSTEIN / The Trauma of Everyday Life
- 08/24/2013 - The goat Rodeo Sessions
- 08/20/2013 - Yang Fudong and Philippe Pirotte in Conversation
- 08/03/2013 - Book Signing and Discussion with Dave Kehr, followed by The Lawless Breed
Tag Archives: Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm
Reminder: Share your Firestorm memories at BAM
As part of a series of public events supporting its current exhibition by Berkeley photographer Richard Misrach, the Berkeley Art Museum is inviting the local community to gather at the museum this Sunday afternoon to share memories of the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm.
At the BAM/PFA “Tell Your Stories: Open Mic in the Galleries” event, the museum is turning the microphone over to the community. People will be encouraged to talk about their memories amid Misrach’s compelling photographs, taken 20 years ago during the week following the Firestorm and unveiled for the first time in this exhibition. … Continue reading »
Get prepared for an emergency: Here’s how
Twenty years after the Oakland-Berkeley fire ripped through the East Bay hills, killing 25 people and destroying close to 4,000 houses and apartments, houses have been rebuilt, trees and shrubs have grown back, and life has seemingly returned to normal.
But the threat of fire — as well as earthquakes, as was witnessed yesterday — remains constant.
The city of Berkeley has taken many steps since the catastrophe to help prevent, or deal with, another one. Some of those include vegetation abatement, changes to building codes, firefighter training and equipment. Read the full list of measures compiled by Berkeley. ”Much of this would not have been possible without resident and voter support, and these investments are a real testament to our community,” says City of Berkeley spokesperson Mary Kay Clunies-Ross.
To remind people of the likelihood of future disasters and to show them how to prepare and survive, local cities and officials are planning a day of workshops and fairs in the East Bay this weekend:
- Saturday, 9am: The cities of Berkeley and Oakland will hold a firestorm remembrance starting with a 9 am reflection at the Rockridge BART station Firestorm Tile Wall.
- Saturday, 10:30am: At 10:30 am, there will be a formal Commemorative Ceremony of Remembrance at the Gateway Emergency Preparedness Exhibit Center at Tunnel Road and Caldecott Way. Mayor Tom Bates and Fire Chief Debra Pryor will speak. … Continue reading »
Loss assessment: Building anew after devastation
By Kurt Lavenson
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The fire missed me that day. I was alone in my fiancée’s kitchen, up near the ridge line of the hills, drinking coffee and reading the Sunday paper. The heat and winds were unusual. Pine needles blew from the trees and whipped sideways past the windows. I noticed smoke in the distance, in a corner of the view to the north, comfortably far away and just mildly interesting.
But it didn’t stay that way for long. Soon I was packing family photos and boxes of files into my truck for an evacuation. When we returned hesitantly the next day, the house and neighborhood were fine. The winds had stopped before pushing the fire into our canyon — and that was all it took to separate us from the others. A mile or so north, there were 1,500 acres of blackened devastation. … Continue reading »
Twenty years after a catastrophe, recollections — Part 2
Berkeleyside invited readers to submit their stories about the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm. Here we publish the second part of three selections.
By Lori: Heading back to Berkeley from Walnut Creek, the smoke was already visible over the Caldecott Tunnel. I usually take Fish Ranch Road back to North Berkeley, but that day, I went through the tunnel. Although I saw no flames, the smoke was covering the sky. Back at home, I watched the smoke plume head west from the … Continue reading »
Inspired to make The Sims after losing a home
Will Wright’s home was one of the first to burn in the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm. His quick thinking in fleeing without delay probably saved his life, and that of his first wife and immediate neighbors whom he took with him. The experience also had another consequence: it inspired him to create what became the best-selling personal computer game in history.
Wright, one of the world’s leading video game designers, sprang to prominence when his company, Maxis, launched Sim City in 1989. Maxis was sold to Electronic Arts in 1997. Wright’s new company, Stupid Fun Club, was formed two years ago and is based in West Berkeley.
The process of assessing his losses and material needs after his home burned down set Wright to thinking about the value of possessions and the promise they hold of fulfillment. Having always been passionate about architecture, he began to develop an idea for a game where players would simulate daily activities in a suburban household, including building a home from scratch: The Sims was born.
Wright’s home was on a ridge on Norfolk Road, very close to the site of the incompletely extinguished grass fire that is believed to have sparked the catastrophic fire that swept through the hills on October 20.
Wright remembers waking up that morning and smelling smoke. … Continue reading »
With elegy book, community becomes part of exhibition
Speaking about his new exhibition of photographs which opened simultaneously at the Berkeley Art Museum and the Oakland Museum of California this week, Richard Misrach says it is as much a community event as an art show.
The haunting images, taken 20 years ago in the wake of the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm, document the aftermath of a disaster that touched everyone who lived or worked locally. And, now, because the photographs have never been shown before, people who lost homes — or perhaps even family members — are seeing these large scale, beautifully composed images for the first time. The impact is bound to be strong and responses are likely to be emotional.
Misrach knew he wanted to create a way for community members to articulate their reaction to the photographs and contribute to the exhibition directly. So he decided to create two handcrafted elegy books, one for each museum. Exhibition goers are encouraged to write in the books — or include photos or drawings — and the tomes will become part of the museums’ exhibition archives.
The design of the books fell to Brian Scott of San Francisco’s Boon Design, who worked with Misrach 20 years ago on his book, Bravo 20, and Berkeley bookbinder John DeMerritt. Scott and DeMerritt share a love of ledgers — the type that banks or courthouses would use in the past, or that hotels still sometimes have on display as guest books. … Continue reading »
20 years after a catastrophe, recollections, Part One
Berkeleyside invited readers to submit their stories about the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm. Here we publish the first of three selections.
By Valenta de Regil: October 19th, 1991 — A Saturday, hot like the weeks prior, I was working to make a more full work week out of one that’d had short days due to the extreme heat, painting at a beautiful house on one of the lower hairpin curves on Alvarado Road. A modern sleek house, with a large interior wall I had painted in a lovely wash of sweet and spicy red tones the previous month. My architect client was throwing a fiesta that evening and encouraged me to stay, which was sorely tempting.
As I drove away that afternoon, leaving my tools and job-book behind, I felt something pushing me out of the neighborhood. It was a game day and, with the heat, there was an oppressive vibe around Tunnel Road and Claremont Avenue… lots of cars and people, traffic and blockage.
I hadn’t stayed due to a birthday celebration at the Edinburgh Castle in San Francisco, and a night of drinking and eating fish and chips, but after a week of heat and more than average thirst, the morning was a haze of pain. There were two attempts to wake me by a dear friend, but I wasn’t able to take in the information. The second try included the phrase, “Your friends’ house is burning down, right now!” I was far away across the bay in Marin, and with my severe headache, there was only grey in my visual of the day. I watched flames on a small TV screen, and cried. All I remember of the day is a blackish grey color. Ash.
The top of Alvarado had been the locale of a lovely mid-century classic in which I had created my first decorative finishes a few years earlier. Midway down the street was a house which contained sculpture and various belongings, and a history of a long string of friends who had resided there. It was the first place I was able to gain access to after the fire. All I found was ash and melted glass, a Stonehenge sculpture vaporized into gasses.=
I had once lived below that road in Claremont Canyon, and my personal history with the neighborhood was deeply engrained in my heart, which was sorely broken for all who had lost everything — far more than my colorful walls and some belongings. The sentimental beauty has returned, the hills revived with love, with people strong in desire to live there with respect to the past. … Continue reading »
Looking for familiar landmarks, seeing what little was left
By Risa Nye
October 23, 1991: At the foot of Broadway Terrace, I squeezed into a police car with another couple. We rode in silence, afraid and anxious to get close enough to see what remained of our homes and our streets. We weren’t allowed to drive ourselves in yet; hazardous sparks and hot spots still glowed in some places. Fallen power lines might still be live. Some reports said that everything that could have burned, did. Still, I didn’t know quite what to expect.
It was so odd. Things at the bottom of the hill looked normal. Houses, cars, the golf course, blocks of undisturbed homes left untouched by the fire. But then, a block or so further up the hill, it all came into view.
The first thing I noticed were the chimneys, tall brick columns still attached to their hearths punctuating wide expanses of black, all the way up to the top of the hills. And it was quiet. No birds, no other cars, no people.
The hills of our destroyed neighborhood resembled a moonscape: a post-apocalyptic expanse of scorched earth, blackened trees and chimneys standing like sentinels left to watch over the ruins. Gray foundations marked the footprints of houses no longer there. We were shocked at the vastness of the damage. Stone cherubs stood in what had been a backyard; a fountain surrounded by ashes; skeletons of patio furniture. … Continue reading »
No warning, then a crisis: Outrunning the Firestorm
The Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm in October 1991 killed 25 people, destroyed close to 4,000 dwellings, and burned a huge swath of Oakland and Berkeley. The fire broke out on a clear and hot Sunday morning when strong winds whipped up embers from a blaze in the Oakland hills that firefighters thought they had extinguished. Within a short time, flames were everywhere, consuming dry brush, dry shake roofs, jumping from home to home.
Above, a video shows the sheer force of the fire and the panic as local residents tried to flee. (Warning: some readers may find the footage upsetting.) Below, writer Deirdre English recounts her personal experience of running from the flames.
By Deirdre English
It happened so fast. Five minutes later and we would all be dead.
There had been no warning, no sound of fire sirens, no squad car commanding an evacuation. At 11:00, I was making breakfast for houseguests when we smelled smoke and saw the sky darken. At 11:30, we were running for our lives.
Towers of flame were bearing down on us from three directions, and we had nothing left to do but abandon our cars and outrace the fire as it closed in behind us.
Our neighborhood was one of the first areas hit by flames. There was nothing but dry hillside between the spot where the fire began and my street, and in the minutes it took to sweep down the hillside, the flames had already become a firestorm. … Continue reading »
On 20th anniversary, community remembers Firestorm
As the 20th anniversary of the 1991 Oakland-Firestorm approaches, the community is preparing to commemorate it in a number of different ways, including with city initiatives and collaborative cultural experiences.
While Oakland was much more affected by the devastating fire than Berkeley — only 63 of the homes destroyed that fateful day in October 1991 were in Berkeley, from a total of 3,354 — geographical boundaries became irrelevant as the whole community experienced the trauma of the experience as one.
The cities of Berkeley and Oakland have joined with other community partners to mark the anniversary with a formal commemorative ceremony of remembrance, and they are also taking the opportunity to remind people to take emergency preparedness measures.
On October 22, people are invited to gather at the Rockridge BART Firestorm Memorial Wall at 9:00am. Later, at 10:30am, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and Berkeley Fire Chief Debra Pryor will speak at the remembrance ceremony which will take place at the Gateway Emergency Preparedness Exhibit Center on Tunnel Road and Caldecott Lane. At noon, a Family Preparedness Fair will be held at Lake Temescal, at 6500 Broadway. Fire trucks, kids’ activities and information booths are all on the agenda. Find information on the city of Berkeley website. … Continue reading »
Twenty years on, share your memories of a disaster
Twenty years ago next month, on a sunny Sunday in October, a raging fire took hold and — driven by hot, dry northeasterly winds — swept through the Oakland-Berkeley hills causing massive destruction and loss.
The flames jumped two freeways, eventually spreading across 1,520 acres, incinerating more than 3,300 homes at an average rate of 11 seconds each and, ultimately, injuring 150 people and leaving 25 dead.
The Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm still looms large in the collective memories of our community. Nobody who … Continue reading »
