Firestorm in the library
May. 7th, 2004 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacFound at the public library: Firestorm by Margaret Sullivan, a narrative account/oral history of the 1991 Oakland/Berkeley wildfire that claimed thousands of hillside homes.
This event had me running back and forth between the television, my maps, and the computer, trying to pass a local's perspective on to concerned denizens of the GEnie online service. I remember assuring one fellow that a relative of his in Benicia was 20 miles and a half-mile-wide river away from the fire zone, so she was probably safe. Other friends and relatives, in particular many local SF writers, lived much closer, and I passed on what info I could from the tv's description of the fire lines.
I remember noting that while the news gave detailed updates on the location of the Oakland front, the Berkeley front was only described in vague terms. Perhaps the stations had fewer reporters there. One poster was dead-certain that Greyhaven, home of several fantasy writers in the Berkeley hills, was gone. I couldn't say where the fire had gotten to, but I doubted that it had reached Greyhaven, for it surely would have had to get the Claremont Hotel first, and that, at least, we would have heard about. Would've gone up like a torch, with devastating effects for the neighborhood. In the event, both survived.
That's what makes it so interesting that Sullivan's book is written almost entirely about the Berkeley side of the fire. It turns out that the Berkeley FD had made a firm stand two blocks above both locations and were able to hold it. It's nice to read about some genuine heroism.
Meanwhile on the computer front, I've gotten B's Windows working by reloading from disk, but her IE web browser is shot. I'd like to uninstall it and reload it too, but the question is, where can I find a copy on disk? Local computer stores don't sell any browsers, period. They say you can download them from the web. But in order to get on the web you need a ... Tell me, when did catch-22 become so stringent in the computer field?
This event had me running back and forth between the television, my maps, and the computer, trying to pass a local's perspective on to concerned denizens of the GEnie online service. I remember assuring one fellow that a relative of his in Benicia was 20 miles and a half-mile-wide river away from the fire zone, so she was probably safe. Other friends and relatives, in particular many local SF writers, lived much closer, and I passed on what info I could from the tv's description of the fire lines.
I remember noting that while the news gave detailed updates on the location of the Oakland front, the Berkeley front was only described in vague terms. Perhaps the stations had fewer reporters there. One poster was dead-certain that Greyhaven, home of several fantasy writers in the Berkeley hills, was gone. I couldn't say where the fire had gotten to, but I doubted that it had reached Greyhaven, for it surely would have had to get the Claremont Hotel first, and that, at least, we would have heard about. Would've gone up like a torch, with devastating effects for the neighborhood. In the event, both survived.
That's what makes it so interesting that Sullivan's book is written almost entirely about the Berkeley side of the fire. It turns out that the Berkeley FD had made a firm stand two blocks above both locations and were able to hold it. It's nice to read about some genuine heroism.
Meanwhile on the computer front, I've gotten B's Windows working by reloading from disk, but her IE web browser is shot. I'd like to uninstall it and reload it too, but the question is, where can I find a copy on disk? Local computer stores don't sell any browsers, period. They say you can download them from the web. But in order to get on the web you need a ... Tell me, when did catch-22 become so stringent in the computer field?
