My previous post used the event of the 17 October 2024 wildfire within the Oakland Hills to discover bigger themes. It appeared unseemly to say that I appeared ahead to visiting the burn space. However I waited for time and did that.
Scientists have skilled pursuits in wildfires. Naturalists and biologists examine how habitats and wildlife reply to those disturbances. Amongst geologists, specialists in landslides and erosion have an curiosity too. The overall run of geologists, nevertheless, be aware of fires as a result of they clear the bottom and reveal rock outcrops. We add the localities to our checklists of doable outings. The October hearth was in part of city I’ve wished to take a look at anyway. This, then, is a submit exploring smaller themes.
The Keller hearth, because it was named, did quite a bit much less hurt than it might have. Situations have been very dry and winds have been brisk and opposite. The slope was steep, lined with brush and fallen leaves, and rose immediately towards a line of hilltop homes. However a Red Flag Warning had been declared, firefighting gear was pre-positioned within the hills and the well-coordinated response, by greater than dozen state and native businesses, got here quick and arduous with 5 alarms. Two houses, down close to the origin, have been burned however each different threatened construction was saved.
This photograph, from that first afternoon October 17, reveals what the responders confronted.
From Oakland Fire Department’s Twitter thread
Word that the flames have been low to the bottom and water was efficient. Air tankers dropped crimson retardant on the hillside larger up. Floor crews went into motion across the perimeter. The mixed effort held the blaze to fifteen acres and stored it from flashing right into a crown hearth, a monster that creates its personal wind and turns every little thing to ash.
I’ve wished to see this space for a very long time, however curiosity should mix with care. I waited a month earlier than I visited, to verify there’d been some rain to agency up the soil. This stretch of wooded slope, largely city-owned and sparsely inhabited, lies between the decrease finish of Campus Drive and the “Monte Vista Village at Leona Quarry” growth. Right here’s a Google Earth indirect view.
The location is within the Caballo Hills district, however not like the millionaire’s row on Campus Drive the bit round Rifle Street, on the left finish, is the funkiest, woodsiest little bit of city I can consider whereas the precise finish is straight-up postwar-to-eighties suburbia. The hearth simply occurred to enter the empty woods between all three sectors after beginning close to the freeway.
Define of the Keller hearth, from the Cal Fire scene viewer
I used to be after the rocks. I anticipated nothing greater than the Leona volcanics, proven in magenta on the geologic map of the identical space.
Magenta, Leona volcanics; tan, Jurassic basalt; inexperienced, sandstone of the Knoxville Formation
The basic “Leona rhyolite” is a near-white rock with reddish floor stains, like this yard boulder on Maynard Avenue. It’s not an actual rhyolite, which is a kind of lava, however slightly is a compacted and strongly altered volcanic ash.
Readers with lengthy reminiscences may recognize this rock
Generally it has greenish elements owing to a whiff of celadonite.
And its formal description consists of occasional quantities of basaltic lava. I noticed some right here and there on the hillside, because of the intensive exposures.
What I largely noticed was basic Leona, with out the dense infusions of pyrite discovered within the outdated mining zone a mile or two to the northwest. There have been no quarry pits, no piles of mining rubble, no overgrown roadbeds, simply good hillside outcrops on land left the best way it was made. And inexperienced sprouts have been in all places.
Whereas the fireplace scorched the timber, it killed their leaves with out igniting them. My impression is that many of the woods will recuperate with solely gentle injury — and the 2 species on this hillside, oaks and eucalyptus, are tailored to reasonable hearth regimes.
I believe the timber in these views will quickly flip inexperienced once more.
And the gasoline load from the eucalyptus will accumulate once more, because it has in the remainder of these woods.
As I stated, the worst didn’t occur. The roots and soils are intact, and the sprouts are prepared for extra of the nourishing rains.
In my previous post I talked about good hearth. This fireplace was dealt with nicely, with outcomes nearly as good as will be anticipated, however it wasn’t good hearth. Managing it took all we had.
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