Features

Last weekend in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota) where in October high temperatures are normally in the 60s, marathon officials looked at high humidity, cloudless skies, expected temperatures in the 90s and canceled the Sunday, October 1, 2023 marathon and 10-mile races. Later in the day, the temperature reached a record setting 92°. In the New York City Triathlon, a second run was substituted for the swim in the Hudson River over concerns of water contamination following flooding from Friday’s record-breaking rain of over 8 inches in one day. 

Berkeley is entering its own mini-heat wave, but it doesn’t look like we’ll dip deep into fire weather or any local records will be set even with Bay Area temperatures averaging 14° above normal. Berkeley should coast with ease through this little autumn heat dome weather event that is predicted to last only a few days. But, the bigger message is the same. 2023 looks to be the hottest year ever recorded and the planet is heating faster than expected. 

Monday night I received a “how-could-I-support-parking-in-the-hills” call. Didn’t I know that would increase the value of the property and just make traffic in an evacuation worse? I signed off to join the Sierra Club Conservation Committee meeting, but not before I said Council hasn’t studied the Fire Department Master Plan, the Dispatch Center Report and the Fire Department Evacuation Study won’t be complete until next year. There should be a moratorium on adding any density to the hills. Of course, that isn’t what happened Tuesday evening. 

I’ve been a Sierra Club member for thirty years, but until I attended the Conservation Committee with Glenn Philips, Director Golden Gate Bird Alliance (formerly Golden Gate Audubon), Erin Diehm and Alfred Twu to request the Sierra Club to support the Berkeley Bird Safe Ordinance, I had always left the committee work to others. The Sierra Club endorsed the Bird Safe Ordinance.  

I stayed on for the rest of the meeting listening to the discussions for over two hours until finally I couldn’t stay quiet any longer and asked, “[T]his is supposed to be conservation, and where do we fit in ecosystems and nature and habitat, and how do we fit that in with housing, because if we only look at climate change that’s not going to save the planet and that’s not going to save us? We also have to figure out how to fit in that [ecosystems, nature] with what we’re doing. Urban habitat is really important.” 

The Sierra Club Conservation Committee is now on my already long list of meetings to attend. 

If you want to vote in the fall election on who decides what the Sierra Club does or doesn’t support, join or renew your membership now. https://tinyurl.com/4mzmjhpz 

The tongue-in-cheek editorial by Robert M. Smith in the October 4, 2023 Chronicle of the Department of Public Works doggedly pursuing the removal of a small bookcase for a free book exchange in front of a pet store in San Francisco’s Cole Valley seems like the perfect introduction to the October 3 Berkeley city council meeting. 

At least in the removal of the small bookcase no one suffered physical injury in contrast to what was described as the punishing end to the Berkeley Chess Club on Telegraph Avenue. 

Eighteen speakers stepped to the podium in the non-agenda comment period to describe their amazing experience of meeting people whose paths they would never cross without the cultural hub of the Chess Club. They spoke about Chess Club welcoming beginners to International Masters in a “beautiful mix of cultures that encapsulates Berkeley,” with the founder Jesse Sheehan keeping the Club running from dawn to dusk. 

As more speakers stepped forward, they filled out the story with a business owner that had given permission for the club to meet on the plaza of the closed bookstore (originally the famous Cody’s Books) to a business owner fined $79,000 by the City of Berkeley for code violations. Their description of the torturous manhandling of Jesse Sheehan, founder of the Chess Club, being handcuffed with his arms behind his back and lifted by his wrists into a Berkeley Police vehicle, then being disappeared for hours and then dumped at an area hospital was backed up by the 12 second video of the arrest posted on the Cop Watch website. https://www.berkeleycopwatch.org/single-post/video-brutal-arrest-of-chess-club-organizer 

It would take more time than I have now to find the city council meeting when councilmember Hahn extolled the culture of other cities like Paris and New York City with parks being the center of gatherings like playing chess. I commented that evening that people played chess on Telegraph. 

The Chess Club pointed to Councilmember Rigel Robinson and gentrification as being at the center of this. 

City Administration responded that the location of the Chess Club was the subject of code violations, and the property owner came into compliance with the terms of use by removing the items at 2454 Telegraph (Telegraph and Haste). There were no incidents and Berkeley Police were on standby. 

Robinson followed by saying that there was a misunderstanding, that the arrest of the Jesse Sheehan the founder which happened later (after the clearing of the plaza) was unrelated. The Chess Club needed to coexist with neighbors and find better locations than with this property owner. Hahn suggested parklets, Harrison offered District 4 and Bartlett offered to help them form a nonprofit. 

All this “oh-we-care-so-much” was punctuated by Hahn’s “…I whole heartedly share your vision for enlivened street for community gathering…” 

It seems it was the make-up of the people playing chess not being preppy enough that was at the core of the take down. 

Not being a chess player myself, I never stopped to linger when I’ve walked up to Telegraph, but I loved seeing the pairs of people seated at the tables out on the plaza in front of a closed storefront concentrating on their next chess move. It was so Berkeley. 

Council moved on to the consent calendar which included approving the appointment by Robinson to fill a vacant seat on the Police Accountability Board (PAB). More speakers stepped forward, this time representing the ASUC AAVP (Associated Students of the University of California Academic Affairs Vice President) and the Cal Berkeley Democrats asking the PAB to investigate the police brutality caught on video and reminding council of the leaked racist texts from Berkeley Police officers. Chess Club was a diverse mix of people. 

It was after 8 pm when council moved on to the ADU Ordinance. Councilmember Kesarwani could be seen grinning on zoom as Mayor Arreguin began forming a final motion around Kesarwani’s Supplemental (draft conditions). 

Council brushed aside the comments from Wengraf that even on a normal day without fire and evacuations, delivery trucks and parked cars on the narrow winding roads block access. In Wengraf’s moving plea, she said this is a problem now stating “We have lost lives by emergency vehicles not being able to get through. People have died because first responders can’t get through. The focus on evacuation modeling is a mistake…” 

Councilmember Humbert, District 8 had little to say during the entire evening except to praise city staff and Kesarwani and to suggest removing excess vegetation, figure out red curbing and consider building separation. It is not surprising, but should be, that he had so little to say when Panoramic Hill, Fire Zone 3, the Highest Risk Fire Hazard Severity Zone in the entire city, is in his district. 

At the September 27, 2023, meeting of the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, Janice Thomas brought copies of the Panoramic Patter from July 1952, showing that discussion with the City of Berkeley for a secondary access road to Panoramic Hill has been going off and on (mostly off) for over seventy years. 

It was commissioner Harrison Raine (appointed by Robinson District 7) who placed the State Fire Marshall’s June 2023 report, again a recommendation for a secondary access road to Panoramic Hill, on the August 2, 2023, commission meeting agenda for discussion. 

At the September meeting, it was former mayor and Fire Safety commissioner Shirley Dean who introduced the agenda item recommending that the commission forward Thomas’s letter with a cover letter to council. Unable to reach agreement on the content of a cover letter, the commission postponed action to the next meeting. 

During the lengthy Panoramic Hill discussion that ensued, Raine said he thought there should be a focus on home hardening and sheltering in place, not evacuation. 

When I heard sheltering in place, all I could think of was my drive to Hiller-Highlands after the Oakland - Berkeley Hills fire in 1991. The reality of it sunk in as I looked over the devastation with little left other than foundations and chimneys. 

Of course, no one knows whether their home hardening actually works until a fire reaches them. 

In pictures from the August Lahaina fire, the recently remodeled Millikin home with a commercial grade steel roof and five feet of river stones around the house stood as the only surviving intact house surrounded by burned to the ground structures. Fire experts credit the river rock as giving the landing embers nothing to burn. 

Even a casual look at Berkeley shows a city of wildfire fuel, wood fences, decks and balconies, patio furniture, invasive vegetation and buildings closely packed in next to each other. Whether rain gutters are free from debris, vents are protected against floating embers and roofs are rated for fire zones is another question. 

When past fires show flying embers driven by wind jumping six lanes of freeway into Coffey Park in the Tubbs fire, and eight lanes in the Oakland – Berkeley Hills Fire, no part of Berkeley is safe from a rapidly moving wind-driven fire starting in the hills. 

Councilmember Harrison’s issues revolved around her opinion that off-street parking should not be required and accessory buildings (garages, garden sheds, etc.) need to have the same Structure Separation Distance (SSD) setbacks and standards as ADUs. She urged the council to pushback against the California Department of Housing and Community Development’s rulings where they conflict with safety. Harrison referred to the fire in the town of Paradise as the example of more cars making it more difficult to evacuate and for fire trucks to get in. In her assessment, off-street parking would just add more cars in an evacuation. 

The investigative reporting in the Los Angeles Times by Paige St. John, Joseph Serna and Rong-Gong Lin II contradicts with the notion that it was too many cars. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-camp-fire-deathtrap-20181230-story.html 

Their December 30, 2018 “Must Reads: Here’s how Paradise ignored warnings and became a deathtrap” tells the story of a city council ignoring warnings and choosing to reduce pedestrian car injuries by narrowing the road: 

“Paradise officials repeatedly told The Times they never envisioned a firestorm reaching the town. But the 2005 state fire management plan for the ridge, developed in consultation with some of those same Paradise planners, warned that canyon winds posed a ‘serious threat’ to Paradise. 

The ‘greatest risk’ was an ‘east wind’ fire, the document said, ‘the same type of fire that impacted the Oakland Berkeley Hills during the Oct. 20, 1991 firestorm’ that killed 25 people. [emphasis added] 

The plan also warned of ‘a high potential for large damaging fires and loss of life and property’ in the Concow Basin beside Paradise. Heavy fuel loads, steep terrain, poor access and light flashy fuels create sever fire hazards. The increased population in this area creates a high potential for catastrophic life and property loss…’ 

Town recordings show a lone voice of concern at the 2014 council meeting giving final approval to the road narrowing. ‘The main thing is fire danger,’ said Mildred Eselin, 88. ‘If the council is searching for a way to diminish the population of Paradise, this would be the way to do it.’” [emphasis added] https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-camp-fire-deathtrap-20181230-story.html 

Former Berkeley Mayor and current Disaster and Fire Safety Commissioner Shirley Dean,who is in her eighties but not yet as old as not as old as Mildred Eselin was in 2014, was finally allowed to speak at 10:31 pm and said this to Berkeley’s council and current mayor Jesse Arreguin, who is now running for statewide office: 

“Tonight, I am speaking as an individual. I am deeply disappointed in many of the comments that I heard tonight from various councilmembers. I suggest that Berkeley should challenge HCD’s ill-founded contention that Berkeley allow both an ADU and a JADU on each parcel in high fire risk zones 2 and 3. Of the 51 largest California cities, Berkeley ranks #2. We are denser than Los Angeles and San Diego. and within our little land area we uniquely have an Earthquake fault Zone and officially designated landslide and liquefaction areas. You can’t escape the fact that we already have a huge fire safety and evacuation problem. 

“You are also being asked to consider what to do about parking within a half mile of public transportation,, but remember that much of the public transportation in the hills lies within the designated Earthquake Fault. Even though for years cars in the hills park on our narrow winding streets and today those streets can’t function for both firefighting going up and residents fleeing going down,the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission has asked time and time again for enforcement of existing parking restrictions and have been ignored. You need to enact a moratorium on all new detached structures in Fire Zones 2 and 3 at least until the Evacuation Study is completed and it is determined what the appropriate separation distance should be between structures. Building separation is a key factor in reducing the spread of a fire and will improve fire safety and evacuation for everyone. 

“Please listen to your Fire Department who are your staff that understands the issues and what to do about them for the greatest safety for all of us.” 

Standards for accessory buildings turned into a referral to the City Manager “to consider changes to development standards with specific consideration for setbacks, height, and building separation for accessory buildings and structures to promote fire safety citywide.” 

I wouldn’t hold my breath while waiting for the City to come up with any requirements for accessory structures, which can at any time be converted to an ADU by right without regard to building separation, setbacks or height as long as the same footprint is used. 

When someone brags about how much they’ve done or how this or that was passed by council, check if that action was a referral to the City Manager. If it was a referral, you may be waiting a very very long time or never see it again. It took almost five years from start to finish to get the Bird Safe Ordinance passed. 

On October 10 we’ll see if Hahn and Wengraf stand their ground and abstain while the other seven vote yes again at the second reading of the ADU ordinance. 

The City of Oakland took a different path with a very strong stand against HCD.