After the Fire

BY DANIEL HEIMPEL

How one of the country’s largest urban fires reshaped California’s Oakland and Berkeley Hills

IN OCTOBER OF 1991, the sky over the East Bay Hills grew black and brown with thick smoke.

The Oakland Hills firestorm raged, destroying nearly 3,000 homes. By the time it was over, thousands were homeless and the San Francisco Bay Area was hit with $1.5 billion in losses. But what was surely a tragedy in 1991 has developed into a real estate boom in 2008.

“A huge fire is never a good thing; it’s a terrible thing,” says Paul Templeton, a real estate agent with Grubb Co. But Templeton, who has sold homes in these hills for 35 years, says that the clean slate that the fire left has improved the “overall quality of the hills, and it certainly increased the values.”

He cites Temescal Creek, a tight valley where Berkeley meets Oakland, as an example. Today, it is lined with large homes, most at least 4,000 square feet. Many are modern-looking, made of steel and glass. All have huge windows with views of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, or hills to the south through Oakland, depending on which side of the valley the house sits on. And even though the area is still frequented by deer and raccoon, post-fire Temescal Creek valley is clearly urban.

“Temescal Creek was a little hippy,” says Christie Seeley, a local real estate agent and homeowner. “Most of the houses were built in the ’50s or ’60s, almost like little country homes built into the trees.”

A number of the houses were built even earlier, in the 1920s and 1930s, as summer homes for San Francisco’s elite. The majority of houses were built by the owners themselves. There are some stunners from that era, many of which were designed by renowned architect Bernard Maybeck.

One of the most famous architects of his day, Maybeck was the first professor of architecture at University of California at Berkeley, influencing a slew of famous California architects, including Julia Morgan and William Wurster. Along with homes, Maybeck designed San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts. The houses he designed in the hills were elegant, with readily available redwood and concrete. They were also opulent creations with wide-open entry halls and high ceilings.

Houses among the old pines and eucalyptus trees in what would become the burn zone ranged from cottages to mini-mansions and cost anywhere from $200,000 to $600,000, Templeton says. Seeley explains that on the eve of the fires, the market was slow and house prices were low. But then the winds picked up and the hills were engulfed in flames.

What was left was clear ground for architects and billions of insurance dollars for rebuilding. Because of the shock and grief associated with the loss, the zoning departments of Berkeley and Oakland allowed for larger homes.

“The fire wiped out all the much smaller homes,” Seeley says. “And when people came back, they built to the max.”

The blank canvas of more than 1,500 square acres had to be refilled, and Regan Bice was one of the architects who helped in the undertaking.

“First of all, there was a huge emotional factor in the process,” says Bice, who built eight homes in the burn zone. “Just aft er the fire, the clients had lost everything. We worked with owners to establish what they had lost.”

But Bice says homeowners oft en had no blueprints of the original structures, so he followed the contours of the remaining foundations. While some homes were rebuilt very similarly to their predecessors, others morphed.

For one, building codes had changed, so new homes were being equipped with high-quality insulation, temper-treated window pains, steel roofs and seismic protections (the fires of 1991 came just two years aft er the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake).

As the trees started growing back and green reclaimed the untouched ground, new homes took on an urban look. Along with Bice were a host of other architects whose styles ranged from Spanish Colonials with tile shingles and Tuscan villas on steep inclines to futuristic modern homes with sharp angles.

“Every architect brings something different to the table,” Bice says. “And a lot of that variation comes from the architects and not from the owners.”

Templeton says that along with the variations in architecture, there has been an increase in population density and a jump in prices. Beyond the natural appreciation rates and inflation, Templeton says that home values got an extra boost aft er the fire. Today, houses range from $1.5 million to well above $3 million in the Temescal Creek valley.

Even though the homes are more modern and there are more people, the neighborhood still holds some of its pre-fire charm. The trees abound and the deer still roam these beautiful hills.

BY THE NUMBERS

Cost of homes in Temescal Creek before the fire: $200,000 to $600,000

Cost of homes after the fire: $1.5 MILLION to more than $3 MILLION

Homes lost in the fire: 3,000

Square acres that needed rebuilding: 1,500