Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland

California is the state in the U.S. that has historically been the most prone to devastating brushfires. Most often, they occur during the autumn months, in the weeks prior to the first rains of the winter, when hot, dry winds sweep down, turning the landscape tinder-dry. One such example of this was what happened in the hills of Oakland and Berkeley on October 19, 1991, when a small grass fire that was improperly extinguished near the intersection of State Highways 13 and 24 in northeast Oakland caught the scent of the Diablo winds (the Northern California equivalent of the Santa Ana winds that blow through Southern California), and literally exploded into a violent firestorm that burned for several days. By the time the fire was finally put out for real, over fifteen hundred acres had burned, the long-term property damage was $1.5 billion, and twenty-five people had lost their lives, with another 150 being injured.

This is the story told in the 1993 made-for-TV film FIRESTORM: 72 HOURS IN OAKLAND, which mixes in certain dramatic elements with real-life television news footage of the fire, which burned for three days and was, at the time, one of the most catastrophic urban fires in American history. A good cast, including LeVar Burton as Oakland fire chief J. Allan Mather, along with Jill Clayburgh, Keith Coulouris, Richard Yniguez, and Michael Gross, does a fairly good job working with basically an average script that does at times overdo the melodrama in the tradition of many disaster films, both for the small screen and the big screen. With something like the Oakland Hills firestorm, you don't really need it, because the disaster itself is plenty horrifying.

Still, there have been worse films, both for TV and for the big screen, that have been made about real-life disasters, which is why I'm giving FIRESTORM: 72 HOURS IN OAKLAND a '7'.

It took me ages to watch this film which I expected to be worse than what it really was. The introduction of the primary characters was not well scripted at all. It was rather embarrassing. Two-time Oscar Nominee Jill Clayburgh does give a good performance considering the script she had to work with which was not that great. Why she was in a wheelchair wasn't revealed until the end of the film. The three family stories were interwoven clumsily and their actions of evacuating their homes didn't seem all too realistic. Still, after I got engrossed in the scenes of the real fire scenes, I came to like the film. LaVar Burton provided a good performance along with Jill Clayburgh's. I don't think it was as bad as some reviewers have written despite inaccuracies. I am giving it six stars because of the footage of the real fire and for the performances of Jill Clayburgh and LaVar Burton. I've seen far worse TV films than this one.

I lost my home and 26 of my neighbors in this fire in October 1991. This made for TV film began production only months after the actual events. There was resistance among homeowners to the making of this film. 3,300 homes had been lost and for the most part we were very traumatized especially those of use who had to escape under the fire which burned from the treetops down. I was one that was trapped on Charing Cross Road and one of the last to get out alive.

When this film was made the producers rebuilt one neighborhood street with false fronts (obvious in the film) they then burned it down. Talk about rubbing salt in open wounds.

Years have passed, life goes on for most of us and the film is still a campy mess. Inside info if you watch this thing. The Asian family (I lived on the same street) with the boat.... The actual boat was a tiny aluminum row boat. Evidently not enough drama in that.

I have a somewhat different view of this film from most as I have an insider's experience. The film centered on real people on a real street within the fire called Charing Cross Road. I lived on Charing Cross and was one of the last to get out that day. In the movie, for reasons I will never understand, they were very accurate about the name of every street except mine which they fictionalized to "Holly Ridge Road" or something close to that. They also padded really minor details like the size of my neighbors boat. In real life a small row boat in the film a 40 foot yacht. I guess the real story didn't have enough drama in it. Unlike one of the other reviewers I felt the movie was padded out to the full 2 hours. Since the subject was really Charing Cross Road the film should have lasted about 15 minutes which is about the time it took for Charing Cross to become history.

My middle ground rating of the film is based on my love of bad films. This is a bad film but I'm sure that was not their intention. As somebody that went through the fire it's nice to have something like this movie to look at and get a laugh.

I wouldn't have normally spent time commenting on this film but I just wasted 2 hours watching it so I said, "What the heck! An extra 10 minutes of bashing wouldn't hurt!" Well, this looks like a film prepared for school auditoriums, made to show you how bad and dangerous fire can be and what can happen to you if you don't take it seriously! The actors are all amateur (if not, they completely got me fooled!) and, last but not least, be careful: Fire is bad! Really bad!