Oakland firefighters made a tragic mistake by prematurely walking away from the routine brush fire that triggered the East Bay hills holocaust, according to California fire officials and a national authority on wildfires.
Also contributing to the blaze, interviews show, were a series of possible missteps by public agencies and utilities that resulted in a shortage of high-pressure water to fight the fire, an abundance of highly flammable eucalyptus and evergreen fuels and a maze of downed power lines blocking firefighters' way."One needs to seriously investigate the issues of water, power and backup services. There are infrastructure and performance issues," said Lee Halterman, counsel to Rep. Ron Dellums, D-Calif.
Halterman said Dellums, whose 8th Congressional District includes the burned area, may call for a government probe of the disaster, which claimed the homes of two of his aides.
Oakland Fire Chief Lamont Ewell said that firefighters responded at noon Saturday to a 7- to 10-acre brush fire on Buckingham Boulevard above the Caldecott Tunnel with engines, trucks and a "multitude" of 500-gallon water drops from helicopters.
He said firefighters left hoses and other equipment at the scene and checked it through the night. The fire was considered "contained," according to Oakland's Fire Information Center.
Ewell said it was "normal operating procedure" to leave a fire that isn't cold without personnel remaining behind to monitor it around the clock.
When firefighters returned to deal with the fire Sunday morning, Ewell said, embers from a hot spot suddenly were blown beyond the perimeter onto bone-dry trees and shake roofs by furious, swirling winds - and the historic conflagration began.
KTVU reporter Rob Roth and photographer Nick Soares had covered the Saturday blaze. On Sunday morning, they returned to nearby Marlborough Terrace for a follow-up.
"We're up there and there are four firefighters with hoes tamping the ground and another crew off Buckingham Boulevard doing the same thing," Roth recalled. "Then there was a gust of wind about 20-25 miles per hour, and it was like dropping gasoline from the sky."
Moments later, Roth said, he saw homes catch fire on Buckingham.
Officials in two other California cities plagued by urban wildfires - Capt. Al Macdonald of the San Diego City Fire Department and Chief Dean Cathey of the Los Angeles City Fire Department - said it was a mistake to leave the fire before it was cold.
Sharing this view were wildfire expert Stephen Pyne of Arizona State University and California Department of Forestry spokeswoman Karen Terrill.
"There are two words, `contained' and `controlled,' " Terrill explained. "Contained means you have a line around it, but you keep firefighters on the scene. Controlled means you can walk away."
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service