ABSTRACT
One of the crisis counseling programs commended by CMHS was the City of Berkeley Fire Resource Center. Following the East Bay firestorm in 1991, support groups were funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) crisis counseling program for community members of Oakland and Berkeley, California, impacted by the firestorm. The East Bay firestorm was the worst wildland-urban interface fire in the history of the United States. The fire killed 25 people and injured 237, destroyed 3,354 homes, 456 apartments, and left over 5,000 people homeless. Firestorm survivors were surveyed 15 months after the fire, and 205 survivors (i.e., 28% of the total number surveyed) responded to 739 mailed questionnaires. Persons who had participated in support groups were asked to evaluate their helpfulness. Of the 39 who reported participating in support groups, 36 evaluated the groups as helpful, with 19 of the 36 evaluating the groups as very helpful. Some of the favorable comments by group participants are given below:
[It helped] to know that other people were having the same feelings that I was. And to be able to talk about the fire with people that experienced it in a similar way that I did.
