MEDIA ADVISORY: LIST OF UC BERKELEY EXPERTS ON FIRE-RELATED TOPICS

ATTENTION: EDITORS

16 August 2001
Contact: Kathleen Maclay
(510) 643-5651
[email protected]

WHAT:
With fires flaring across the West, reporters are exploring what causes fires, how to prevent them, and the recovery process for residents and physical environments. The following list contains information about experts from the University of California, Berkeley, who are available for interviews about these and other issues.

WHO:
Frank C. Beall
Professor of environmental science, policy and management and director of UC Berkeley Forest Product Laboratory
Office phone: (510) 215-4233
E-mail: [email protected]
Areas of expertise:
Evaluation of housing and nearby vegetation for vulnerability to fires in the urban-wildland interface and the identification of possible mitigation.

Steven Finacom
UC Berkeley staff member and longtime campus historian
Office phone: (510) 643-9936
E-mail: [email protected]
Areas of expertise:
UC Berkeley history and 1923 Berkeley wildfire that left 1,000 students homeless and turned Stephens Hall into an emergency relief center.

Tom Klatt
Director, emergency planning and communications for UC Police Department. UC Berkeley representative on the Hills Emergency Forum, a consortium created to lead and facilitate fire prevention, suppression and emergency planning.
Office phone: (510) 642-1258
E-mail: [email protected]
Areas of expertise:
Project identification, planning, and design for wildland fuel modification efforts. Interagency planning and relations for cooperative planning and management of fire mitigation projects.

David Mandel
Instructor, UC Berkeley Extension landscape architecture program. UC Berkeley environmental and long-range planner for campus hill area. UC Berkeley liaison for the Hills Emergency Forum.
Office phone: (510) 643-0694
Cell phone: (415) 706-1422
E-mail: [email protected]
Areas of expertise:
Physical and environmental planning and design, stream channel protection, landscape design, protected species and critical habitats, regulatory issues.

John Radke
Associate professor of landscape architecture, director of the Geographic Information Sciences Center
Office phone: (510) 643-5995
E-mail: [email protected]
Areas of expertise:
Principle investigator for research team that developed an "East Bay Hills Fire Hazard" CD that enables residents to type home addresses into a database for an instant look at their neighborhood's relative fire risk and ways to improve fire safety. The project distributed about 1,000 free CDs to the public. Radke and some students recently completed a study of fire conditions in Claremont Canyon.

Scott L. Stephens
Assistant professor of fire science
Office phone: (510) 642-7304
E-mail: [email protected]
Areas of expertise:
Interactions of wildland fire and ecosystems, including how prehistoric fires once interacted with ecosystems, how current wildland fires are affecting ecosystems, and how future fires and management may change this interaction. Stephens is sponsoring a fire seminar series at UC Berkeley's Mulford Hall this fall on Thursday afternoons. Open to the campus and community, it will cover diverse areas in wildland fire including fire history, fire behavior, urban-wildland intermix, fire and freshwater aquatics. For more information about his research, see his Web site at:
http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/departments/espm/grad/html/faculty_html/stephens.html

Carroll B. Williams
Adjunct professor of forest science
Office phone: (510) 642-8092
E-mail: [email protected]
Areas of expertise:
Forest health. Studies interactions between disturbances caused by fire, insects, pathogens, humans and other natural forces, as well as their impacts on the structure and dynamics of forests and the urban-wildland interface.

R. Brady Williamson
Professor of civil and environmental engineering
Office phone: (510) 642-5308
E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
Areas of expertise:
Fire safety engineering, fire behavior, fire modeling, fire interaction with materials, structure and properties of materials.