CALIFORNIA ALBUM : Neighbor vs. Neighbor : As the rebuilding from the devastating fire in the Oakland hills takes hold, the new ‘monster houses’ block scenic views and strain relations.

High in the hills overlooking San Francisco Bay, victims of the great fire of 1991 are taking roost once again. Hammers are flying, saws are buzzing and lumber trucks trundle noisily about from daybreak until dusk.

What is missing is the giddy spirit of renewal. Once united in the communal glow of survival, fire victims are a divided bunch, locked in warfare over what some see as a new menace to their scenic hills--”monster homes.”

Monster homes are, in a word, monstrous. Almost two-thirds of the houses lost in the fire are rebuilt or under construction, and most are nearly half again as big as their predecessors--with some bulging beyond 6,000 square feet.

Shoehorned onto steep, tiny lots, the bulky buildings look stark against the naked, fire-scarred landscape--”like warts on a tennis ball,” one resident said. Aside from their aesthetic effect, the monster houses have blocked views, robbed neighbors of sunlight and privacy and placed the stamp of ostentation on once-eclectic neighborhoods.

Community relations are yet another casualty. Neighbors who shared recipes and baby-sitters before the fire have in some cases become sworn enemies, bitterly split over such matters as towering roof lines and obtrusive deck railings.

“People are at each other’s throats,” said Tom Lavin, an architect whose house escaped the flames but is now oddly dwarfed by the massive trilevel dwelling erected next door.

“Pick any street, and you’ll have Mr. X screaming about how Mr. Y plopped the house from hell down right outside his window.”

The inferno that torched the wooded East Bay hills Oct. 20, 1991, left little in its wake. Twenty-five people died; another 150 were injured and more than 2,500 homes were incinerated as if they were cheap paper lanterns.

As 5,000 suddenly homeless residents struggled with their loss, many found solace in neighbors suffering a similar plight. Support groups and community associations sprang up to help with lost pets, insurance disputes and every other aspect of the fire’s toll.

But once rebuilding geared up and repopulation of the hills began, some of those warm fuzzy feelings began to ebb. In their place has come, for some, a sad resignation that things may never be as they were before the flames.

Greg Mize, one of the first to rebuild after the fire, subscribes to this view. Mize, a contractor, built his new house himself and had enough money left from his insurance settlement to pay off his mortgage. He moved in a year ago, and once again began enjoying a panoramic view that stretched from the Golden Gate Bridge north to Mt. Tamalpais.

“All in all,” he said, “things were great.”

Then came “the monster,” looming up in front of his deck. Unbeknown to Mize, his longtime neighbor--a fellow fire victim--had designed a home four times larger than the modest one that stood there before. Instead of overlooking the Golden Gate, Mize’s house now overlooks his neighbor’s Jacuzzi.

“We used to be friendly, but I won’t talk to him anymore,” Mize said in a voice that underscored his anger. “He stuck that enormous thing--that fortress--in front of me without a thought to how I might feel. How could someone be so presumptuous?”

Up the hill a bit, poet Anne Ziebur is wondering the same thing. A 30-year Oakland hills homeowner, she carries a snapshot depicting the telescopic view she had before the prow of her neighbor’s new house got in the way.

“I had this wonderful view--this priceless gem--but now every time I look at it, I get punched in the face by THAT,” Ziebur said, jabbing a finger toward the offending chunk of beige stucco next door.

Just as troubling, she added, are “all those windows he put in. Wherever I go--my living room, my kitchen, my office--he can see right in. I am a private person, and now I have no privacy left.”

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Oakland’s elected leaders knew this would not be easy. You don’t rebuild a sprawling, upscale enclave from the ground up without confrontations. The tough question was how much latitude to allow residents in re-creating their homes.

Collectively, “residents said they wanted houses of the same scale, and neighborhoods that looked just like they did before the fire,” said Tom Doctor, planning czar for the burn zone. “But individually, they came in with plans for houses that were a lot larger--monster houses.”

Former Councilwoman Marge Gibson-Haskell, who represented the hills until this year, said the city erred by not adopting her proposed view preservation ordinance, which would have kept a home builder from occupying a neighbor’s rightful slice of sky.

But Doctor said such a law would have created administrative nightmares because of the difficulty of proving precisely what view a given home commanded before the fire.

“With all the trees gone, many people now have magnificent views that they never had before,” Doctor said. “Unfortunately, some people’s memories have dimmed since the fire, and they swear they have had that view all along.”