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Their tent encampment still intact despite a city eviction order, hundreds from the Occupy Oakland protest marched through Oakland on Saturday afternoon, stopping traffic as they waved flags, danced and chanted. The march began at Frank Ogawa Plaza, where protesters have been camping since October 11 to protest economic inequality.
Occupy Oakland protesters received their second wave of eviction notices from the City Administrator’s Office on Friday night. Despite the threat that police could force them to leave at any time, protesters continued their daily routines, which included a night of revelry at the amphitheater outside of City Hall.
It’s been 11 days since Occupy Oakland took over Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza, and now the tent city is bigger than ever and facing eviction. Over 550 people occupy Oakland’s plaza, even after they received an evacuation notice from the City Administrator’s Office on Thursday evening. Among the concerns listed on the notice are graffiti, vandalism to plaza infrastructure and “the historic tree,” and the disruption of the plaza for public use by groups who had to relocate events which had previously been scheduled at the plaza.
Oakland voters began mailing in ballots this week to decide the fate of a controversial $80 parcel tax that is being promoted as vital to help Oakland’s budget crisis and assailed as an unnecessary burden on homeowners, with no binding resolution to determine where it would be spent. Measure I would raise $60 million for the city over a five-year period.
The 1991 wildfire, which shot out of control on October 20 and lasted almost 72 hours, was so large and fast-moving that it challenged the capacity of Northern California’s fire departments and wreaked havoc on the hills community. OaklandNorth.net remembers the fire and examines what has changed in the past 20 years.
Twenty years ago, when Oakland Fire Department Captain Ian McWhorter was out on the burning hills, joining hundreds of other firefighters battling a blaze that took 25 lives and destroyed over 3,500 homes, he was dressed for battle with a structural, not a wildland fire.
The map shows the spread of the Tunnel Fire and infrared imaging of the burning hills taken by NASA’s DART satellite. The NASA Ames Research Center assisted firefighters in monitoring the movement of the fire, which was difficult to control due to extreme lack of visibility on the ground.
Explore our timeline of East Bay wildfires to learn more about some of the area’s worst conflagrations, as well as how a particularly dangerous weather condition called a “Diablo Wind” contributed to each disaster.
In the panic to escape the flames, many Oakland Hills residents faced the difficult challenge of choosing which personal possessions to take with them. Some saved practical items–clean underwear, tax forms. Some were left with just the clothes on their back, or random belongings thrown together.