Tragedy Renews Calls for Ban on Wooden Shingles : Prevention: Some communities require that roofing materials be fire-resistant, but measures that would have imposed statewide standards have not been able to get past opposition.

Once again, fire officials say wood-shingle roofs made a hellish inferno worse, sending it roaring from housetop to housetop through yet another California neighborhood.

And once again, the disaster has ignited political fires as well, prompting state and local officials either to recommend banning wood shingles on future construction, or at least making them safer.

A somber Gov. Pete Wilson told reporters Monday that his aerial tour of the fire-ravaged hills above Oakland made him think that the Legislature should consider adopting building codes that require fire-resistant roofing material on new homes statewide.

Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) vowed to dust off such a bill and get it ready for introduction--for the third time since 1985. Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn went one better, calling for state lawmakers to enact an outright ban on wood-shingle roofs.

“It’s a predictable pattern,” said Bob Burns, spokesman for the Committee for Fire Safe Roofing, a group representing makers of non-wood roofs. “In fact, we’ve got about two weeks if we want to get something done, because everyone will forget about it in two weeks. That’s the way it goes.”

Burns said the history of fire reform is simple--safety improvements follow disaster. Panic bars became standard equipment on exit doors after 602 people died in a 1903 Chicago theater fire, he said, and sprinklers in high-rise buildings became standard after 84 people perished in the 1980 MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas.

Burns noted that within a week after the disastrous 1990 fire in Santa Barbara, officials there banned wood products on new roofs. Several years ago, the city of Los Angeles--mindful of the 1985 Baldwin Hills fire--did likewise and found itself challenged by wood-shingle manufacturers who took the matter to court, where it remains.

Three years ago, when fires began raging in Northern California, the state Department of Forestry imposed rules requiring new homes to use fire-retardant wood shingles in the 30-million acres of land under its control.

But there is still no statewide standard.

The result is a patchwork of regulation. Berkeley voted in tough restrictions on wood-shingle roofs for new homes two months ago--too late to have made a difference in the weekend fire. In Oakland, officials had imposed less-restrictive safety requirements for wood shingles north of California Highway 13, but south of the highway the city’s building code allows untreated wood roofs. The fast-moving fire consumed homes on both sides of that road.

In Ventura County, wood-shingle roofs have been prohibited on new buildings since the early 1980s, though some cities permit the use of a fire-resistant variety in areas more than 500 feet from brushland, said Dan Spykerman, assistant county fire marshal.

Also since the early 1980s, both the city and county of San Diego have required any new wood-shake roofs to be made of fire-retardant material.

In Anaheim, after a 1982 fire destroyed about 525 units and caused $50-million damage, the City Council banned shake or shingle roofs for new buildings, Batallion Chief Joel Shennum said.

The new requirements came less than a year after a disastrous blaze in Anaheim in 1982 that destroyed 50 houses and apartment buildings with wood shake roofs and left 1,500 homeless.

Now, in the aftermath of the Oakland fire, wood shingles are under close scrutiny again. Wilson said Monday that the roofing material factor is “something that leaps out at you.”

“Suddenly, amid the charred ruins of all the destroyed homes, there seems to be one that is intact, almost untouched. In almost every case, the homes that were standing were those with tile roofs. And the homes with shake roofs were in ashes,” the governor said.

Watson said she would try again to establish minimum fire-retardant standards for wood shingles throughout the state. The lobbying muscle of wood-shingle manufacturers derailed the measure twice before, including the first time she introduced it after the Baldwin Hills fire in her district.

“We had all of the help from the state fire marshall but we couldn’t get it through the wood shake and shingle industry,” she said.

A spokesman for the wood-shingle manufacturers said they are prepared to embrace minimal fire-retardant standards, although untreated shingles still account for half of its $50-million annual business in California. Companies making the shingles just want to make sure their products are not banned, he said.

“What’s disturbing to us is that everyone’s quick to point the finger of blame on wood roofs,” said Michael Westfall, president of the Cedar Shake and Shingle Bureau in Bellevue, Wash.

Times staff writers Carl Ingram and Richard Simon contributed to this story.