.A Disaster Waiting to Happen

As we head into the worst part of fire season, a sprawling property in the Oakland hills is strewn with overgrown vegetation and hollowed-out buildings.

Eighteen years ago this month, Oakland suffered one of the worst
fire disasters in US history. The 1991 Oakland hills firestorm killed
nine people, destroyed nearly 4,000 homes, and caused widespread
property damage that reached estimates exceeding $35 billion. Now,
after three years of drought have left trees and shrubs crackling dry,
the city is staring into the teeth of another dangerous fire season.
Plus, Oakland is facing a frightening new threat. The 167-acre former
Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in the hills above I-580 is a mess of
overgrown and dead vegetation and dilapidated buildings that under the
wrong circumstances could explode.

The sprawling Oak Knoll property also is littered with toxic
asbestos that could pose a significant health threat should it become
airborne. Plus, the one hundred or so rundown buildings on the property
have become a haven for transients. Indeed, the situation at Oak Knoll
is so dire that the office of City Attorney John Russo has fired
off a series of urgent letters and motions in recent days to the
bankruptcy court overseeing Oak Knoll’s future, demanding that the
extreme fire and health hazards be cleaned up immediately.

City officials estimate that it will cost at least $6.7 million to
abate the property.

“The grounds at Oak Knoll are disgusting,” Russo wrote in a strongly
worded letter to the bankruptcy trustee’s attorney late last month.
“The vegetation is largely dead and the Oakland fire chief has declared
the area as a major fire threat. There are ninety-plus dilapidated
World War II buildings that are just wooden shells — a tinderbox
awaiting a lightning strike, the carelessness of a trespasser, or
worse.”

Oak Knoll was abandoned last fall by its owners, the developer
SunCal and its financial backer Lehman Brothers, after Lehman, and then
SunCal, filed for bankruptcy. But before leaving the site, crews
working for SunCal and Lehman began stripping out the old Navy
buildings, readying them for demolition. But then when Lehman ran out
of cash and stopped paying the bills, the crews took off before completing
the work. Now, the property is full of hollowed out buildings and piles
and piles of flammable, toxic debris.

At the same time, trees, shrubs, and weeds have overgrown nearly
everything on the site, including the streets, making it difficult to
get around. The fire department is particularly concerned about
fighting a conflagration on the property because East Bay MUD shut off
most of the fire hydrants when SunCal and Lehman stopped paying their
water bills. “Leaving the site with asbestos and no water, it’s
unconscionable,” said Donald Mitchell of the Sequoyah Hills and
Oak Knoll Neighborhood Association, during a recent tour of the
property. “It’s inexcusable.”

Mitchell and the neighborhood groups have kept a close eye on the
many developing problems at Oak Knoll. In fact, he filed $115 million
in claims with the Lehman bankruptcy court in New York last month
before the city filed its $6.7 million abatement demand with the SunCal
bankruptcy court in Southern California.

Mitchell also has expressed concerns about both the Oakland police
and fire departments’ decision to operate training exercises on a
5.5-acre city-owned parcel within Oak Knoll. The city property, which
is not subject to the bankruptcy proceedings, also is in terrible
shape, and cops and firefighters may have been exposed to asbestos
without their knowledge. “The city of Oakland has willfully allowed
these buildings to remain in this extremely hazardous condition for in
excess of two years while they continue to
deteriorate further,” Mitchell wrote in an e-mail to city leaders
late last week.

In addition, the fire department may have worsened the fire threat
by cutting large holes in the roofs of buildings on the city’s property
during the exercises. In an interview, Oakland Fire Marshal James
Edwards
said the training was good for firefighters. But he
acknowledged that if a fire were to start in one of those buildings,
oxygen flowing through the holes in the roof could allow the blaze to
spread more rapidly. “It could probably burn a little faster,” he said,
adding that the buildings should be boarded up to keep out
transients.

The city filed its motions and clean-up demand in advance of a
pivotal October 15 court hearing in the SunCal bankruptcy proceedings
in Orange County — which are closely tied to the Lehman case back
east. Russo and lawyers for the city are concerned that the outcome of
the hearing will result in no money being directed to Oak Knoll any
time soon. In recent days, numerous cities have flooded the court with
similar motions, demanding action on the two-dozen or so problem
properties created by the SunCal-Lehman implosion.

Although SunCal and Lehman deserve most of the blame for what has
happened at Oak Knoll, Russo and lawyers representing the city are
especially angry with the bankruptcy trustee, Steve Speier, in
the SunCal case. They argue that Speier has flouted numerous federal,
state, and local laws in allowing Oak Knoll to become a disaster
waiting to happen. They also note that Speier has been acutely aware of
the situation for the past year. In fact, in previous court filings,
Speier has sounded the alarm about Oak Knoll and other SunCal/Lehman
properties, telling the court that “human lives and property are being
put at risk.” Neither Speier nor his attorneys, William Lobel
and William Neue, returned calls seeking comment for this
story.

Finally, it should be noted that the SunCal/Lehman debacle at Oak
Knoll is not directly tied to SunCal’s separate plans for a massive
housing development at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. But having
said that, SunCal’s inability to prevent or correct the egregious
conditions at Oak Knoll should be a cause for concern for both Alameda
leaders and city residents.

Oak Knoll, Elephants, and Giraffes

Some of the dead wood strewn around Oak Knoll is not the fault of
SunCal, Lehman, or the city. In recent years, Oakland Zoo workers
illegally cut down dozens of black acacia trees there to feed to the
zoo’s elephants and giraffes. But because the animals don’t eat the
acacia’s trunks or large limbs, the zoo workers left them lying around
the Oak Knoll property and just took the smaller branches and leaves.
“At some point they decided to just back up the truck and pull out the
chainsaws,” Mitchell said.

Joel Parrott, executive director of the zoo, told Full
Disclosure that they had permission from the Navy, and then from SunCal
and Lehman, to cut down the acacias, which are non-native species. But
Parrot said they didn’t know they were violating city law when they cut
down trees with trunks that are at least nine inches in diameter at
chest height. “That’s where we made our mistake,” he said.

Parrot said the zoo is not suffering from a lack of food for the
animals. Instead, they chopped down the acacias because the animals
like them so much. “They love to chew on it and eat it —
especially the elephants,” he said. He said the zoo and the city are in
negotiations over what penalty the zoo should pay for cutting down so
many trees without permits. Zoo employees may end up planting trees at
nearby King Estates or doing trail work, he said.

But some neighbors are upset that the zoo is apparently getting off
with a slap on the wrist because of its standing in the community. They
note that the city has sought to prosecute private citizens for cutting
down trees without the proper permits. In fact, the city recently won a
conviction against an Oakland resident who illegally chopped down a
neighbor’s tree.

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