The Aftermath: How Do You Rebuild a Dream?

By PAUL A. WITTEMAN/OAKLAND

Think of it as your neighborhood. Your neighbors. Thirty years ago, that's what 12-year-old John Harrison had in his mind as he pedaled his bicycle from the gritty flatlands of north Oakland uphill to Lake Temescal. Nestled in a gentle curve of hills and shaded by fragrant eucalyptus, many of the well- tended homes offered postcard views of San Francisco Bay. To Harrison and thousands of others, the enclaves -- Upper Rockridge, Montclair, Broadway Terrace, Hiller Highlands -- were about as close to heaven as anyone could get and still be earthbound.

Nine years ago, Harrison achieved his dream and moved into 535 Mountain Boulevard, a three-bedroom brick-and-stucco house. At that point the law firm he helped found was four years old and starting to prosper. Harrison and his wife Joy began thinking about raising a family. "I was absolutely thrilled to be here," he says.

Last Thursday morning John and Joy, accompanied by two policemen, sifted through the ashes for vestiges of their once comfortable life. The chimney, built to withstand as well as nurture fire, stood as a charred sentinel above the remains of the living room. Bending down, Joy retrieved two small vases that her six-year-old twins had made in a pottery class with her mother. The tears came quickly as she cradled the pieces of ceramic. "How could this happen?" she asked.

On that tragic Sunday morning, Joy had been in the backyard fixing the hair of five-year-old Montez. The twins, Earnestine and Adia, were running around in their bathing suits. Young John, at two the baby of the family, was riding the swing. His dad, a deacon at the Allen Temple Baptist Church, had decided to miss morning services and worship in the afternoon. Reading the newspaper in bed, John focused on one story in particular: an account of a brush fire that had erupted the day before in the nearby hills and that fire officials said had been extinguished.

But then the sound of sirens shattered the Sunday peace. Joy moved to the front yard, where she was joined by neighbors and then by John, all of them craning their neck and looking for the fire. "This smoke was different from Saturday's," says John. "It was dark and thick. But I still thought it was no big deal." At noon John took a shower, thinking for the first time that he might have to take action. "Let me get some clothes on the kids," he said to himself. "Let me get my credit cards, just in case." Joy ran up the hill to neighbors to help them hose down their house. "I can't stand here and cry," she thought. "I've got to do something."

By 1 p.m. John was on their own roof with the garden hose. The view across the canyon to Hiller Highlands was unnerving. One by one, houses exploded in flames. A neighbor yelled that they were surrounded by fire. "We're the hole in the doughnut," he shouted. John shivered. "At this point I was still halfway rational," he remembers. He got the kids into their tennis shoes, backed the station wagon and the Mercedes sedan out of the garage, put the kids in the cars and left the engines running. At 2 p.m. the fire crested the hill above the Harrison house with a terrible roar and danced down the slope. Joy belatedly began trying to collect valuables. She found the savings bonds and the photo albums. "I got an armful of suits and two pair of shoes," recalls John. The kids, watching from the station wagon, began screaming.

As Joy scrambled for a few last items, the fire sent a final warning, one that the Harrisons interpreted as a biblical omen. Directly behind John at the edge of the carefully manicured lawn, an ember arced slowly down into a bush. Instantly the shrub flashed into flames. "Let's go," John yelled. Joy resisted. There was so much more to save. "I was going to bop her and carry her out," John remembers. It was not necessary. Over the howl of the wind Joy heard the scream of Earnestine from the car. "I don't want to die," she wailed. Joy ran down the steps to the car and her children. As they drove downhill, John called his mother-in-law on the car phone to tell her they were coming. "The house is gone," he told her, realizing that he was also telling the unthinkable to himself.

/ Down in the flatlands John stopped to buy a can of soda. A shabbily dressed woman asked him for money. "Hey, I'm homeless too," he snapped. The woman looked at his Mercedes and said to John, "Oh, you must be one of those rich people who got burned out up on the hill. Maybe you'll have more compassion for us now." The stinging rebuke gave John pause. "It made me realize that this is not as bad as I thought. Our children are safe. The material part of your life you can do without if you have to." Besides, unlike the homeless woman in the parking lot, Harrison thought, "we're only going to be homeless for a minute."

For the Harrisons and the 5,000 others displaced by the fire, the minutes will stretch into months, perhaps years. The fire stripped the steep slopes of the vegetation necessary to prevent erosion. Already there is fear of mud slides once the rains of winter come to the Oakland hills. Many older residents, hearts and spirits broken, may choose to take their insurance money and move on. Not John Harrison. "The location is so great," he says. "We'll rebuild. Definitely." But then he thinks for a few seconds. "How long," he asks quietly, "does it take to grow a tree?"