Imagining the Unimaginable

The Fort Bragg Fires Part II: Fort Bragg Burned In More Ways Than One by Mark Heimann and Bruce Anderson for the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 3  rd , 1999 Edited by Peter J. Mello – December 29  th , 2017 F anning out for miles beneath seemingly every corner of Pittsburg are the roots of the Affinito family tree. No, not the East Coast steel town (did you catch the missing 'h' at the end?), but rather Pittsburg, California : a tough-as-nails industrial suburb tucked in an oft-forgotten corner of Contra Costa County, where the two rivers that power the state's massive agricurtural economy in the Central Valley converge to first become Suisun Bay, then San Pablo Bay, and finally the famed San Francisco Bay. During the events covered in the first installment of this series, little more than 30,000 people called it home, most of them earning “honest” livings connected to the busy deep-water river port and adjacent...

The Fort Bragg Fires Part I: The Money Trail by Mark Heimann and Bruce Anderson for the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 3  rd , 1999 Edited by Peter J. Mello – December 29  th , 2017 Publisher’s Note: In a remote Northern California logging and fishing hamlet, hidden in the inky autumn blackness before either moon or sun would rise on September 20  th , 1987, an unknown group ignited three brazen and near-simultaneous arson fires that destroyed the Ten Mile Justice Court , the adjacent City Library and, just two blocks down Main Street, the venerable Piedmont Hotel and restaurant (seen right). No one was ever prosecuted for the blazes, spectacular and disheartening as they were, and only much later would residents learn the motives behind them and the rest of the series of arsons-for-profit that plagued the small coastal community of Fort Bragg in the late 1980s....