By Shoshana Hebshi, Redwood Chapter Communications Coordinator
Fire has left an impression on Gregory Simon. He was 17 when the Tunnel Fire ripped through his neighborhood in the Oakland Hills, sparing his home but destroying everything around it. Twenty-six years later, the University of Colorado geology professor has had much time to ruminate about it…so much that he wrote a book.
“Flame and Fortune in the American West” uses the Tunnel Fire as a case study to understand how human expansion of housing into fire-prone areas has continued to prove catastrophic for many but profitable for some.
Simon came to Santa Rosa Dec. 18 to tour areas that burned in the Tubbs Fire with Sonoma Group leaders Suzanne Doyle and Teri Shore, also representing Greenbelt Alliance. After the tour, Simon presented his book to about 30 environmental leaders, architects and city and county officials at the Sonoma Land Trust and hosted by Greenbelt Alliance and Sierra Club.
During his talk, Simon referred to planning and development in fire-prone areas as an arsonist. “We knew there is risk of fire, yet we build,” he said.
If an arsonist was on the loose, he continued, we would catch him. But with the continued building into wildland, the arsonist goes unchecked.
“Homes are fuel,” he said. “In many cases, the vegetation is not the problem.”
While touring burn areas in Fountaingrove and Coffey Park, Simon noted that the fire there was so hot that even fire-resistant trees like redwoods could not survive. The insides of the homes were so flammable, and the fire moved so quickly that the neighborhoods didn’t have a chance.
The group stopped at two areas within the burned areas on Fountaingrove, one where a senior care center is planned on Gullane Drive and another where a luxury retreat center is planned at “Buzzard’s Gulch” inside the community separator between Santa Rosa and Windsor.
Projects like these are being proposed in an area that has been burned twice: in the 1964 Hanley Fire and again in October.
Shore said she wanted to bring Simon to Santa Rosa after hearing him on KPFA the first week after the fires. “I invited him to help us think more broadly and deeply about the…complexities that got us here in the first place.”
Simon will be back to talk about his book March 10 for a public event at Copperfield’s Books. We’ll keep you posted.
