Oakland Firestorm of 1991 - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• This disaster was included as one of several different disaster scenarios in the 1993 video game SimCity 2000. The game's designer Will Wright used his experience of rebuilding his life after his home was burned down due to the fire as basis for the concept of the best selling computer game in history, The Sims.
• The story of the Oakland fire is a major plot element of the children's book "Tikvah Means Hope", by Patricia Polacco. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1994. ISBN 0-385-32059-0
• The 1993 TV movie Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland was based on the Oakland hills fire. It incorporated actual Oakland fire footage as well as audio from radio transmissions made by the fire crews on the scene.
• The book "Almost Home: America's Love-Hate Relationship with Community" contained a chapter of critical assessment of the social aftermath of the fire. It highlighted how the selfish and individualistic desires by some of the victims of the fire overwhelmed any preliminary voice of community togetherness, including fraudulent and greedy practices towards charity and insurance claims.
• The fire is a theme in author Maxine Hong Kingston's novel The Fifth Book of Peace.
• Live footage of the fire was shown on the NFL on CBS telecast of the game between the Detroit Lions and San Francisco 49ers, played across the bay at Candlestick Park. As with the earthquake two years earlier, the blimp shots provided many people with first word of the disaster.