Extra

Sunday, September 17 was the 100th anniversary of the 1923 Berkeley Fire that destroyed a 50-block area burning more that 600 homes to the ground. The anniversary was marked with the Fire Ready Festival at Live Oak Park, tented tables with city police, firefighters ready to talk about safety, vendors with fire prevention and safety products, sparkling fire trucks and children running around in their firefighter hats, playing games and generally enjoying the day. 

There have been many California fires with greater devastation than Berkeley’s 1923 fire. There was the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire with 25 lives lost and 3,469 homes, apartments and condominiums burned, and the 2017 Tubbs fire with 6,957 structures burned, of which 1,422 were homes in Coffey Park where 23 people lost their lives. There was the Camps Fire in 2018, where 85 people in the town of Paradise lost their lives and nearly 19,000 structures burned to the ground. 

There is a common thread in all of these: the rapidity with which the fires moved and how quickly they engulfed residential neighborhoods. Coffey Park wasn’t even designated as a hazardous high fire risk area and yet it succumbed to flying embers blown over the six lane 101 freeway. 

Peter Hartlaub in the Sunday, San Francisco Chronicle described the advancing 1923 fire from Wildcat Canyon into North Berkeley this way, “The fast moving wall of flames descended like an ambush, reaching residential streets with little warning less than two hours later.” 

In 1923 the winds shifted from the east in the late afternoon to come in from the Bay. That is what stopped the advancing fire from crossing Shattuck and stopping near Berkeley Way. 

I am reminded of a conversation I had with the former Fire Chief Brannigan. I heard 3rd hand that the fire chief for Kensington had said a wildland-urban fire could burn Kensington to the ground in around eight minutes. I asked then-Chief Brannigan what he thought about that statement. His answer was, “that sounds about right, Berkeley could burn to the ground in about an hour.” 

Startled, I absorbed that news thinking about where I live in the flats. Several weeks later, I asked my question about Berkeley a little differently. Did he mean Berkeley could burn to Sacramento or San Pablo in an hour? Brannigan answered“to the bay”, describing how strong winds from the east could carry embers spreading the fire. 

At the Fire Ready Festival, I caught up with Fire Chief David Sprague who cordially answered my many questions. When I asked the same questions of Chief Sprague, he said he didn’t want to put a time on how fast Berkeley could burn to the ground in highest risk fire conditions. We went on to talk about the evacuation study that is currently in process, the Master Plan for facilities, decontamination areas in facilities, adding density in the hills and curb redlining to prohibit parking. 

Sprague didn’t want to paint the picture of current readiness too harshly, but reading the Master Facilities Plan presented to the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission on September 6, 2023, the study of Standards of Coverage (SOC) by Citygate which compares Berkeley Fire Department response times to accepted standards states this: 

“…the Department is organized only to accomplish ‘yesterday’s mission’ and is struggling to meet current demand, much less the future growth of the City and University…The ongoing intensification of land uses, building heights, and population density will make several sections of the City very urban – typical of the largest metropolitan cities for building fire and rescue/EMS challenges…The City’s fire and ambulance programs must evolve to those suitable for a major urban fire department in staffing, unit types and facility locations…” 

Over the last twenty years, Berkeley has transitioned from a mostly single story, single-family residential community, with low-rise multi-unit buildings of two, three and four stories, to a dense urban, vertically oriented community. 

The State density bonus allows a 50% increase in height over zoning limits in return for the paltry designation of 10% of the units of the “base project” for very low-income households. This means that six, eight and ten story buildings seem to be popping up everywhere in the flats. Soon there will be 26 story buildings. In the end, the 10% of very low-income units is calculated only on that portion of the building that could have been approved without the state density bonus. This means that the number of units set aside for very low-income households is less than 10% when looking at the entire project including the bonus. 

We’ve heard from Fire Chief Sprague previously, what vertical density, adding height, means to firefighters. Sprague said buildings above seven stories are designated as high-rise, though the transition comes with anything above five floors. The example he gave to Budget and Finance Committee last April was that a fire on a ground floor could be handled with around 30 firefighters, but when that same kind of fire is in a high-rise the number of firefighters needed goes up to 50 to 100 and if it is anything more than a couple of rooms then it is several hundred firefighters. 

At the Fire Ready festival, I struck up a conversation at the firefighters’ booth, asking about their new air breathing equipment and how that worked going into a high-rise fire. Firefighter Jesse told me they don’t turn on their “air” until they hit the fire/smoke. That answered my question about how they could run up all those stairs with fifty plus pounds of equipment in a high-rise and still have any air in their breathing equipment left when they reached the fire. 

The health risks to firefighters from exposure to smoke and inhaled toxins was covered in the Sunday, September 3, 2023 San Francisco Chronicle article “Smoke poisoning state’s firefighters agencies accused of decades of failure to protect wildland workers.” 

The significantly higher incidence of cancer and heart disease firefighters face is also included in Berkeley Fire Department Master Plan. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/legislative-body-meeting-agendas/DFSC%20Agenda%20Packet%2023-09-06%20-%20Special%20Meeting.pdf 

As Chief Sprague and I spoke, I directed the conversation to the apparent disconnect of the Planning Department proposals to densify Berkeley with the impact on the Fire Department to service bigger taller buildings and the residents in them.  

September 6 was an interesting evening as City meetings go with just that contrast. There was a very well-attended hearing at the Planning Commission on the Southside Zoning Modification Project at the North Berkeley Senior Center, and fewer than a handful of attendees at the Fire Department Training Center to hear Fire Chief Sprague present the Fire Department Master Plan to the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. 

While the Planning Commission listened to the City of Berkeley Planning staff describe the plan for upzoning the Southside and the public comment that followed, Fire Chief David Sprague was reporting elsewhere that the Fire Department facilities are not equipped to handle the current Berkeley population and current high-rise buildings. 

It didn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind in the City Planning Department presenting the case for upzoning, intensifying the Southside with bigger taller buildings that cover more land and more buildings on a parcel (a lot) with more people, would add a burden to an already overtaxed Fire Department. 

A number of speakers at the Southside Zoning Modification hearing complained of not having adequate notice and that the 269-page meeting packet and the agenda did not drop until just before the beginning of the long holiday Labor Day weekend. 

As for the complaints that the Southside Zoning Plan was new and there was no public notification or meetings, rezoning the Southside has been in the City’s sights for years, really since 2016. It has been in the Planning Commission Workplan. The Planning Commission met on the Southisde Zoning Modification Project on April 19, 2023 and that meeting was followed with a presentation at the Design Review Committee May 18 and June 15, 2023. 

However, the earlier presentations did not include the environmental impact report or diagrams of the fault lines and landslide areas. The presentations covered the changes to the zoning code and very little else. 

Digging through the Planning Commission 269-page agenda packet, buried in the Addendum to the 2023-2031 Housing Element Update Final Environmental Impact Report (HEU) on pages 172 173 under Services, concludes that adding up to 1652 new units will reduce the demand for fire protection as the probable 4,130 new residents will be in new buildings with more stringent regulations. Additionally, increased call volumes, emergency medical, disaster preparedness, future facility remodeling, 911 dispatch upgrades, etc. could all be covered by the 2020 Measure FF. Measure FF was estimated to generate $8,500,000 annually. 

The diagrams on pages 140 and 141 show the eastern edge of the Southside sitting in an earthquake-induced landslide area with the Hayward fault running through it. 

The agenda packet HEU section on Wildfire is contained in pages 182 – 186. This section starts out describing increased development would be located in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ), “…that construction and operation…could introduce potential sources of wildfire ignition…” and that the impact of building out the plan was “…found to be significant and unavoidable…” but since there are no significant changes there doesn’t need to be any revision in the analysis or plan. 

While City staff did mention that the border of the Hillside overlay runs through the Southside, it was never stated that the Hillside overlay defines entrance into the very high fire hazard severity zone. Nor was it ever noted in the Southside Zoning Modification Project that these new eight story buildings (twelve stories with the State Density Bonus) filled with students would be just four blocks from Panoramic Hill, the highest fire risk area in the entire city for a wildland-urban fire. 

Nowhere in the environmental impact report (HEU) is the history of wildfire nor as recently noted by Fire Chief Sprague is there the information that Berkeley experiences a major fire about every 20 years. Berkeley is now at 32 years since the last fire, the Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire. 

At the Planning Commission hearing there was the usual parade of UC students declaring their support for the plan, reiterating there is a housing crisis. 

The neighbors expressed their concern about the impact on city services and the potential of UC taking over the new developments with master leases giving them tax exempt status and thereby removing them from contributing through property taxes to the cost of services these added thousands of students will demand. 

Mayor Arreguin would probably say that the agreement he negotiated with UC covers the financial impact of UC on the City budget though Dean Metzger and David Wilson soundly disagree as they wrote in the Berkeley Daily Planet, September 15, 2021. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-09-03/article/49400?headline=Opinion-Berkeley-vs.-UC-Settlement-or-surrender-Part-1--Dean-Metzger-David-Wilson 

There were comments about the proposed classifying a pet washing room, meeting room and gyms as open space, land value capture with upzoning and wildfire risk and the impact on evacuation. 

Land value capture relates to the increased value of the land on which the new buildings will sit. Land value is why putting bigger denser buildings and more buildings on a plot of land does not bring the expected lower rent outcome. The new high value of the land is incorporated into the cost of the housing. 

There were two substitute commissioners, Tim Frank (appointed by Mayor Arreguin), whom I know better as a representative (lobbyist?) for the building trades and Brandon Yung (appointed by Councilmember Robinson), who sits on the Zoning Adjustment Board. 

Tim Frank expressed concern that payment of prevailing wage to construction workers should be included in the plan. Emily Marthinsen, appointed by Councilmember Wengraf,w stated her support for the designation of inside spaces as open space as the campus provides plenty of outdoor open space. 

Brandon Yung said he was, “super stocked” by the progress of the plan and then went on to push for smaller setbacks with more density. Brandon’s suggestions to rewrite setbacks and conditions were finally stopped when staff stepped in to say that such changes would unravel the project. The Southside Zoning Modification Project passed as presented and moves on to approval by City Council. 

Meanwhile across town, Fire Chief Sprague explained when Berkeley’s becoming a YIMBY driven city, fire conditions, science and the emergency services provided by the Fire Department in addition to fire response all fold into the Master Plan. The Fire Department provides emergency medical services (EMS), paramedics, transport, disaster response, dispatch, rescue to name a few. 

Firefighters face significant risk to their health and life through work exposure to smoke and toxins. They do not have facilities for decontamination of themselves and equipment that are properly separated from their work and living spaces while on duty. 

The Master Plan covers the specific needs and deficiencies station by station. Four of the seven fire stations need to be replaced. Those are Fire Stations 1, 2, 4, and 5. A new site needs to be found for West Berkeley Station 1. Stations 3, 6 and 7 can be expanded and renovated at their current sites. Fire headquarters and the ambulance deployment center need to be relocated to a larger space. The needed new training facility and relocation is progressing through a partnership approach with other local municipalities. All this comes with a big price tag estimated as $330,000,000 to $372,000,000. 

This is a lot to swallow.