The Oakland Fire Department is and has always been a structureoriented
fire department. Before budget reductions of the 1970s and ‘8Os,
it was recognized as one of the strongest fire suppression departments in
the western United States. The budget limitations reduced the number of
companies in service and the staffing on each company. Several stations
were closed during this period.
Wildland fire suppression was not considered to be a major area of
emphasis for the department, although many of its officers have developed
knowledge and expertise in this type of firefighting. The department has
not been directly involved in some of the programs that have been
developed for wildland fire suppression forces, and this caused some
problems with the integration of operations at the fire.
Oakland, as the largest city in the area west of San Francisco Bay, is
seldom in the position of requesting mutual aid. There were problems with
the processing of mutual aid requests, partly due to problems with
terminology and procedures in the Communication Center. The
shortcomings of the communications system were also a major obstacle to
effective incident management. The radio system proved to be inadequate
for the scale of operations that was necessary, even for the initial stages of
the incident. These factors made effective coordination or control of the
mutual aid resources that arrived during the first five hours impossible.
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