Fire season is upon the Bay Area. The weather is hot and dry, and the grass is brown as this golden state would have it. This mixture is scary to many because in the East Bay, especially Oakland, many have just finished rebuilding from the firestorm that took hold of Oakland and Berkeley some nine years ago, leaving over 2,000 homes destroyed and some dead.

Already a seven-alarm wildfire aggravated by scorching weather has burned several Novato homes, causing residents to flee. The heat was a major source of that fire.

The Oakland temperature was 95 degrees this weekend, the same as the average temperature throughout the Bay Area. The various meteorologists say that this kind of weather will continue until the end of this week.

It was October 20, 1991, when a small brush fire started in the hills above Oakland, California. Fanned by high winds, unseasonably high temperatures and low humidity, the fire spread rapidly, burning nearly three square miles of affluent neighborhoods on the wooded hillsides. When it was over, the Oakland Hills Fire was labeled the worst urban disaster in U.S. history. It caused $2 billion in damage, including the loss of homes, businesses and lives. This occurred two years after the 1989 earthquake.

So Oakland has good reason to be fearful of the fire season now upon us.[]