Twenty-nine years and one week after his house burned in the Oakland hills fire of 1991, Barry Pilger was bracing for the possibility of another inferno.
Forecasters predicted that ferocious winds would lash the Bay Area on Sunday evening. Pilger and his wife, Catherine Moss, were not taking any chances. They had turned their patio table upside down and placed concrete blocks on top, moved the other backyard furniture inside, put more heavy blocks on the rotisserie and bought two kinds of radios for emergency updates.
They would spend the night at a friend’s house in San Francisco. Moss was already there; Pilger would follow at 10 p.m., packing a chainsaw in his truck in case he had to move a fallen tree from the road.
“This is what happens when you can remember losing your house in a fire,” he said, noting that he’d called several of his neighbors this week, to make sure they knew about the red flag warning. To his surprise, very few of them had an evacuation plan, he said, adding that some appeared nonchalant about the danger and still had cars parked in garages Sunday at dusk.
“We called every neighbor we had a phone number for,” Pilger said. “I had an animated conversation with at least one of them about evacuation routes and tying down furniture.”
When flames tore through Pilger and Moss’ house in 1991, fire-weather warnings were less prominent and nobody was discussing the urban-wildland interface. Residents of the leafy-green hills weren’t meticulously trimming vegetation or creating defensible space. Pilger and Moss’ home was a rambling, plywood structure surrounded by eucalyptus trees.
By dint of luck they happened to be vacationing in Truckee with their dog and cat the Sunday that the fire exploded, killing 25 people, charring 3,500 homes and leaving blackened sticks where trees had been. Pilger said he can throw a baseball from his rebuilt house and hit four lots where people died in the 1991 fire.
Now, his house has layers of drywall and fiberboard siding over the wood. The nearest tree, an oak, is 25 feet away. The city has become more conscientious about fire management, recently installing logs to block turnouts on Grizzly Peak, where traditionally people would stop to light fireworks or even barbecue.
Still, on days like Sunday, Pilger gets nervous. By 6 p.m. the wind didn’t seem to be as ruthless as meteorologists had predicted. Pilger stared out the window and watched a single leaf blow back and forth in his yard. His truck was already packed.
“This is spooky,” he said.
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
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October 26, 2020 at 10:09AM
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Survivor of the 1991 Oakland hills fire braces for danger on ‘spooky’ night - San Francisco Chronicle
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