Researchers examine past major WUI fires to help create a more firewise future

By Brian Ballou

On Oct. 20, 1991, a day-old fire broke loose in the Berkeley/Oakland hills, just across the bay from San Francisco, and soon became one of the nation’s most destructive wildland/urban interface (WUI) fires in history. People watching the 49ers football game on television that day saw a rare spectacle: The cameras often turned away from the field to focus on the smoke plume. By the end of the day, the Oakland Hills Fire had reduced some 1,600 acres of homes to ruin. Twenty-five people died, and nearly 3,000 homes burned. Nobody remembers who won the football game.

The Oakland Hills Fire was the worst conflagration disaster to strike the United States in more than 70 years. Years of drought contributed to the fire’s spread through dry vegetation; however, it was the buildings with available exterior fuels — notably, acres of roofs covered with tinder-dry cedar shakes — that turned the wildland fire into an urban conflagration. Strong winds blew down overhead power lines, igniting new fires. Narrow, twisting streets made it impossible for large fire apparatus to respond, especially when those same streets were clogged with residents trying to flee. Even in areas where firefighters were able to set up and make stands, water supply systems often failed.

In the aftermath of the fire, horror gave way to conviction, and California fire officials and government leaders vowed to make the Oakland Hills Fire the last of its kind. But this was easier said than done.

Spreading the Word About Fire Danger
Following a similar fire in 1923, the Berkeley City Council banned roofing material that wasn’t fire-resistant. The council members then changed their minds. Even after fires in the same hills in 1970 and 1980 burned more homes, shake roofs and other fire-vulnerable buildings materials were still allowed in many parts of the Berkeley/Oakland hills area when the 1991 fire struck.

Today, significant change toward reducing the destructive effects of WUI fires has occurred, not just in California, but worldwide. Much of this is due to dramatically increased public awareness spawned by television coverage of the Yellowstone fires of 1988 and the 1991 Oakland hills firestorm. This widespread coverage, provided not only by network news but also by The Discovery Channel and Public Broadcasting Service, gave viewers ample visual substance to link with fire officials’ warnings about the dangers of WUI fires. People started to understand that these fires weren’t just a California problem. It could — and was — happening elsewhere.

Throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium, wildland fires became conflagrations in Colorado, Alaska, Florida, New Mexico, Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alberta. Even distant places like Sydney, Australia, suffered devastating fires. People started to get the message: It wasn’t just a wildland problem; it wasn’t just a building-materials problem; it was a behavior problem.

People had been supporting the exclusion of wildland fire while they built fire-vulnerable homes in these same fire-excluded areas. For example, many of these developments required homes to be roofed with red cedar shakes so homes would blend in with the wooded surroundings. Then, homeowners realized that paying for fire protection wasn’t a guarantee that their homes wouldn’t burn in a conflagration. The WUI resident wasn’t just being asked to step up and make their home less vulnerable to wildfire. They were being warned.

Now it was time for the government to take action.

Becoming Firewise
The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) devoted considerable effort toward determining how and why homes burned in interface fires. As a result, Jack Cohen, a research physical scientist at the Missoula, Mont.-based Fire Sciences Lab (FSL), became the nation’s WUI guru due to his extensive USFS-funded field testing that pitted fire against structures.

One product developed by Cohen and his FSL colleagues was the Structure Ignition Assessment Model (SIAM), which calculated the ignition potential for structures. Another product was his post-fire analyses of why homes did or did not burn in high-intensity WUI fires. His findings and recommendations became recognized as the standards for protecting homes against wildfire.

The only significant problem with Cohen’s findings: They weren’t exactly user-friendly — especially to typical interface residents and fire-prevention specialists. It was necessary to render Cohen’s high physics into everyday parlance. Fortunately, the media-savvy crew at Firewise was up to the task of translating Cohen’s high science into everyday language.

Born in 1992, Firewise was a product of the National Wildland-Urban Interface Program, which was a joint undertaking of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the USFS that began after the 1985 fire season. Today, Firewise is supported by nearly all federal and state resource management and fire-protection agencies, and provides a range of resources for making communities less vulnerable to destructive wildland fire. Its Web site, www.firewise.org, contains not only a wealth of information, but materials that are eye-catching and easy to understand and use.

Prior to Firewise, defensible-space education materials for homeowners were low-tech pamphlets that, to put it kindly, rarely inspired people to take action. Firewise understood that today’s interface residents were more sophisticated. To grab their attention and hold their interest, it was necessary to appeal to them on the same level as, say, Nike or BMW. Slick design and messages with punch and eye-grabbing images made people want Firewise-produced materials. Plus, Firewise promised not only fire-resistant residential landscapes, it made it clear that a firewise home was better looking and more valuable. People starting seeing personal fire protection not as a chore, but as an investment.

AP PHOTO/ US FOREST SERVICE, JOHN MCCOLGAN The National Fire Plan was developed in response to the countless large, destructive fires occurring across the country, including the Bitterroot fires in Idaho and Montana. This well-known photo shows the intensity of this major conflagration.

National Fire Plan Offers Solutions
As the new millennium dawned, many of the riddles to destructive WUI fires had been solved, and people were becoming more receptive to doing something about making their homes less vulnerable. But widespread fuel reduction was an awesome and extraordinarily expensive task. Where was the money going to come from? The answer came in the form of the National Fire Plan.

Fires during the late 1990s and the 2000 fire season extended a period of large, destructive wildfires, and no state seemed immune. Fires in Florida during 1998 prompted evacuations similar to those prompted by an approaching hurricane. Early 2000 saw the destructive and widely broadcast Cerro Grande Fire in New Mexico, and the latter months of that year were consumed by the relentless, seemingly limitless Bitterroot fires in Idaho and Montana. In response, the National Fire Plan was developed and implemented by the USFS and the Department of the Interior. Millions of dollars were soon piped into fuel-reduction, suppression, rehabilitation and education projects.

In just a few years, National Fire Plan monies made hundreds of projects possible. Cost-sharing fuel-reduction projects in California, Montana, Oregon and other states established defensible space zones around thousands of interface homes; fuel breaks were created adjacent to communities in wildfire-prone areas, such as West Yellowstone, Mont., and Delta Junction, Alaska. Community education projects were launched from the Carolinas to the Pacific Northwest. Hazard-mapping projects were completed, hydrant systems installed, and firefighters received essential training and equipment. Quite a few success stories emerged in areas where National Fire Plan-funded projects took place. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) documented instances where fuel-reduction projects dramatically reduced fire intensity.

The Squires and the Cache Mountain fires in Oregon virtually burned to exhaustion in reduced-fuel areas. A thinning/prescribed burning project in Colorado was credited with reducing the intensity of the Bucktail Fire. National Fire Plan-funded suppression crews and equipment were credited with quick, coordinated attacks on fires in which homes and natural resources were saved.

Simply put, it’s difficult to find an area in the United States where a National Fire Plan-funded project hasn’t made a significant, positive contribution to community fire protection. However, questions linger about the future of the National Fire Plan. The nation is facing some immediate, big-dollar items — hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused billions in damage, and the country is spending billions more on the war in Iraq. Public-assistance programs often are trimmed or eliminated when Congress decides how money is allocated.

If the National Fire Plan should disappear, what will happen to the momentum gained toward mitigating destructive wildfires?

PHOTO COURTESY HAWAII DIVISION OF FORESTRY AND WILDLIFE In August 2005, wildfire burned close to a Waikoloa village in Hawaii. Fortunately, one month earlier, a team of Waikoloa residents had cleared a 30-foot firebreak during a Firewise Communities workday. Inset: The National Firewise Communities program’s online catalog offers more than 30 audiovisual and print materials, including books, instructional videos and more.

Local Governments Step Up
Quite a few states, counties and cities now take long-term fire protection seriously. California and Oregon have state laws requiring WUI residents to create defensible space around homes. An increasing number of counties and cities have adopted fuel-reduction codes and ordinances, ranging from weed and nuisance abatement standards to full-fledged defensible space guidelines. Many municipal districts have added fire-resistant construction materials and siting standards to their building codes. In many places with a history of WUI fires, you’re hard pressed to find a cedar shake roof or a home that doesn’t have fire-resistant siding. Access for emergency vehicles has improved, too. Driveways leading to new or rebuilt homes often must be built to accommodate 50,000-lb. emergency vehicles.

Additionally, in 2003, the City of Oakland stepped up to do what the 1923 Berkeley City Council didn’t, and more.

Today, more than 14 years after the Oakland Hills Fire, the scar remains, but the attitude has changed. Long-term residents have vowed to not forget, to not let another conflagration occur, and they’ve supported fire officials’ efforts to fund a wildland fire-prevention program that has very sharp teeth. Specifically, in 2003, Oakland residents approved a new fire-assessment district. Money raised in the district supports an ongoing fire-prevention education project, and to pay inspectors to enforce the city’s dead-serious fuel-reduction standards. In a nutshell, property owners must comply with the standards described in the city’s fire code every year, or the city will do it for them. At the very least, violators do the work and then pay the city $200 for a re-inspection. On the other end of the violation scale, people who let the city do the fuel-reduction work and then fail to pay the city’s bill will have a lien placed on their property.

Taking fire protection seriously at the local level is arguably the single most important step in the national effort to blunt the destructive force of wildfire. But the infusion of cash provided by the National Fire Plan cannot be understated; it has accelerated many much-needed fire mitigation projects and boosted fire prevention and protection from coast to coast. Without the millions of dollars of federal support, the fear of catastrophic fire would be much greater today. Instead, there’s hope and examples of genuine success.

It’s taken a long time, and much remains to be done, but compared to just a decade ago, many of the nation’s communities are better stationed to withstand potentially destructive fires than ever before. As more WUI property owners and more local governments recognize their fire risk and assume responsibility for long-term protection, tragedies like the 1991 Oakland Hills Fire will be significantly less likely to occur.

Brian Ballou frequently teaches wildland/urban interface residents about ways to keep their houses from burning down. In his day job, he’s a wildland/urban interface specialist and a public information representative for the Oregon Department of Forestry.