Leona Heights Neighborhood News

by Gordon Laverty

Living where there are a lot of trees has its pluses and minuses. The beauty, the shade, and forestlike living are pluses. But the maintenance and cleanup required to control undergrowth for fire prevention are minuses, and serious ones at that. The recent devastating fires in Southern California, the memory of our 1960 Leona fire, not to mention the 1991 Oakland fire, underscore the annual danger of new Oakland hills fires. So Leona Heights supports the present campaign for passage of the Oakland Wildfire Prevention Assessment District proposal. Remember that January 6 is the deadline for receipt of your ballot on the issue. For those living on the lower topography of the proposed District, remember that on a windy day, a fire sets up its own weather and can start spreading house-to-house even where there are few or no trees. The $65 per year assessment per developed land parcel provides worthy insurance against loss of your home and its contents. As a sidelight on eucalyptus trees, now considered fire hazards because of their high oil content, here is an interesting historic note: In the 1880s, a major planting of eucalyptus trees occurred in the Oakland Hills as replacements for the thousands of redwood trees harvested to build Oakland and San Francisco. About 1884, according to historian Beth Bagwell, author of Oakland The Story Of A City, a man named Downie discovered that the brown oil extract from eucalyptus leaves would dissolve rust and prevent encrustation of the many water boilers (at the time used to a great extent to produce heat and power) without harming the boilers' iron sheeting. Downie patented the process and established the Downie Boiler Encrustation Preventive Company. His factory was in the Trestle Glen district. In 1888, he sold across the world 45,000 gallons of his product in cans bearing a bright yellow label. Neighborhoods are not just houses and roads; they are people who live, work, and contribute to the life of our city. We may not know them well or see them very often. We may get only to say "hello" to them or wave as they walk or ride by. But they are our neighbors. This month we note the loss of two longtime neighbors, Mrs. Bernard of Leona Street, who left us in October at the age of over 100 years, and Gladys Tom of Mountain View Avenue, who worked many years at Alameda Naval Air Station and died after a short illness. We will miss them, and offer our sympathy to their families.