Lawsuit Outcome: No Mitigation in Oakland Hills Fire Area

OAKLAND, CA — A lawsuit settled recently over a grant for fire hazard mitigation in the Oakland hills and near University of California at Berkeley has prompted the Sierra Club to say that the settlement could have devastating consequences for the safety of East Bay residents.

Sierra Club East Bay Public Lands committee chair Norman La Force said the Federal Emergency Management Agency is taking away money for managing vegetation in 400 acres of land around UC Berkeley and in Oakland where a wildfire killed 25 and destroyed thousands of homes in 1991.

Sierra Club officials said the decision comes one month before the 25th anniversary of that wildfire.

"This is totally opposite of what FEMA is supposed to be doing," La Force said. "I'm just shaking my head."

Sierra Club officials want the FEMA money for fire management known as "Remove, Restore, and Re-establish," a process that removes the most flammable trees such as eucalyptus in phases and only in areas considered most at risk along the urban-wildland interface.

But the group that had filed the lawsuit against FEMA, the Hills Conservation Network, claimed that the grant money would have been used to remove large trees such as eucalyptus, Monterey pine and acacia trees, which it opposed.

The group said there was little scientific evidence that removing those trees would have reduced wildfire risk.
Hills Conservation Network president Dan Grassetti claimed that the money would have essentially promoted the growth of native plant species since the non-native species of eucalyptus, acacia and Monterey pine would
have been gone.

"It's not fire risk mitigation," Grassetti said.

He said it would have been fraud because the money would have been used for something other than its intended purpose.

Grassetti said his group consists of at least three people who lost their homes in the firestorm, including one who lost their mother.

FEMA spokeswoman Mary Simms said her agency granted $5.67 million to the state for fire hazard mitigation and all of that will still be used for mitigation in the East Bay hills.

She didn't say where and could not say more because of pending litigation against the agency.

Simms said FEMA and the state would like to reallocate the $3.5 million in funding initially planned for work in the 400-acre area of the 1991 blaze to other fire hazard mitigation projects in the East Bay hills.

"Those remaining federal funds are not being withdrawn, and are still available" to the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, Simms said.

The East Bay Regional Park District will now receive part of the $3.5 million, $2.6 million, for fire hazard mitigation in the hills.

UC Berkeley was going to get some of the $5.67 million for two fire hazard mitigation grants, but those were terminated as a result of the settled lawsuit.

— Bay City News; Image via Patch