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Bay Area’s biggest stories of 2017: A firestorm, a...


It was a year of roaring wildfires and extreme weather that may become only more so, a year of divided politics playing out in presidential tweets and the streets of Berkeley and San Francisco, a year of sports teams hanging banners or declaring plans to skip town.

The Bay Area went through a lot in 2017.

A jury acquitted a man whose arrest in the death of a stranger on a San Francisco pier ignited outrage against policies that protect undocumented immigrants. Federal officials deported an Oakland mother, igniting outrage against federal policies under President Trump that target immigrants.

San Francisco’s mayor died of a heart attack. A mass movement against sexual harassment and abuse spread into the Bay Area. In the end, it was a year that had many folks seeking relief. Depending on your perspective, that relief may come with the sale of recreational marijuana, set to begin in the first hours of 2018.

Here are the top 10 Bay Area stories of 2017 as selected by The Chronicle’s staff:

1) Wine Country fires Captain Mike Harrison of Santa Rosa fire directs his team of firefighters in containing a small roadside fire in the Oakmont neighborhood of Santa Rosa, Ca. on Tuesday October 10, 2017.

Some say the world will end in fire, said the poet Robert Frost, and for a time this autumn it surely looked that way. A firestorm laid waste to the North Bay before another one exploded in Southern California. The Wine Country fires, which started Oct. 8, were the most destructive in state history, claiming 44 lives and almost 8,900 structures, many of them on the northern edge of Santa Rosa. Tens of thousands of people awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of neighbors or first responders banging on their doors. They grabbed what they could and fled ahead of the advancing walls of orange. What sparked the blazes remains unknown , while questions linger about the speed of the response and the lack of public alerts during the most critical hours.

2) Death of a mayor People stop to observe the memorial to Mayor Ed Lee in front of City Hall, as seen on Thursday December 14, 2017, in San Francisco, Calif.

The 43rd mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee, was shopping one night in the Safeway near his home when his heart gave out. Within hours, on Dec. 12, the city’s first Asian American mayor was gone at age 65. Citizens remembered a down-to-earth fellow who understood policy more than panache, who told bad jokes with elan, and who helped remake the checks-cashed-here stretch of Market Street into a techie haven. His passing elevated Board of Supervisors President London Breed to the top job and set off a scramble among many others who would like to have it themselves when a special election is held in June.

3) #MeToo movement

Movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Sen. Al Franken. TV hosts Matt Lauer and Bill O’Reilly. President Trump. The roster of those accused of sexual misconduct seemed to grow daily — and it spread into the Bay Area as well as the state Capitol in Sacramento. Faced with accusations, Assemblymen Raul Bocanegra and Matt Dababneh resigned and state Sen. Tony Mendoza lost his leadership posts. Across the U.S., brave victims risked all to step forward as the phrase “Me too” became part of the vernacular.

4) Extreme weather Lorin Doeleman uses a kayak to check her flooded home on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017 in Guerneville, Calif.
Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle

Climate-change deniers were in vogue in Washington but not in Northern California. Here, extreme weather included relentless rains that flooded communities and led to the February failure of the Oroville Dam spillway and mass evacuations. Later, a deadly heat wave enveloped San Francisco, which hit a record-setting 106 degrees on Sept. 1. High temperatures left the state’s forests primed to ignite — which they did. While the drought was a thing of the past, it may also be a thing of the future. So far this rainy season, there haven’t been any rainy days, and meteorologists have been mouthing the D-word again.

5) Resisting Trump Xander Briere and protesters rally during the Women's March on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017 in San Francisco, Calif.

President Trump received 4.3 million fewer votes in California than Hillary Clinton, and none of those voters seemed to change their minds. There were rallies, petitions and protests. The Legislature declared California a sanctuary state with greater protections for immigrants, ruffling the president, and Gov. Jerry Brown ruffled him some more by telling the world that California wouldn’t follow his agenda on the environment or climate change. Advocates, students and employers fought Trump’s efforts to ban entry to the United States from a group of predominantly Muslim countries. The election day cries of “Not my president” morphed, for many, into a constant sense of embarrassment, anger and resolve.

6) Far-right rallies 

White nationalists and others on the far right converged on Berkeley and later San Francisco for a series of public shouting matches and, occasionally, shoving matches and worse. There were broken windows and arrests. Provocateurs (calling themselves patriots) provoked, while protesters (some calling themselves anti-fascists) responded — at times peacefully and at times not. Called upon to facilitate free speech but not chaos, officials faced criticism and spent millions in taxpayer money on security. In August, one creative group got the idea to have San Francisco dogs pay an early visit to Crissy Field, site of a planned far-right rally, to leave their calling cards on the grass. But park rangers fenced off the field.

7) Immigration tightens Maria Mendoza-Sanchez watches the scenery flash by as she and a few family members drive from their small town of Santa Monica to the outer limits of Mexico City to check on a property Sept. 27, 2017 in Hidalgo, Mexico.

After three tries and sustained opposition from many Bay Area residents and officials, the Trump administration finally wrote a travel ban that the courts did not ban. Meanwhile, President Trump signed executive orders that made nearly every undocumented immigrant a priority for deportation and attempted to punish sanctuary cities such as San Francisco. The administration also moved to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children, setting up a congressional battle in 2018 over the future of the hundreds of thousands enrolled. As proponents of stricter immigration rejoiced, stories of people deported from the Bay Area struck a nerve, including that of Oakland nurse Maria Mendoza-Sanchez, who with her husband was sent back to Mexico in August. The couple left four children behind.

8) Acquittal in Steinle killing Passersby walk past a memorial for Kate Steinle on Pier 14 in San Francisco on December 1, 2017, following the acquittal of Garcia Zarate for her murder on July 15, 2015.
Photo: Peter Prato, Special to The Chronicle

A 32-year-old woman took a walk on a San Francisco pier with her father and was struck and killed by a ricocheting bullet fired by a stranger. The death of Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015, stirred controversy after it was learned that the shooter, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, had been deported from the U.S. five times but released by the San Francisco jail under city sanctuary policies. The killing was a frequent talking point by candidate Donald Trump, who used it to call for a wall on the Mexican border. On Nov. 30, 12 jurors emerged from five days of deliberations and found the defendant not guilty of murder and manslaughter. The trial had turned not on immigration but the shooter’s contention that he fired accidentally.

9) Legalizing cannabis Californians prepared to sell and buy marijuana buds and other forms pot for recreational use.

Take a deep breath, California, the time has arrived. When voters approved Proposition 64 in 2016, they made marijuana as legal as a six-pack, and just about as easy to get your hands on. Many in the formerly underground industry spent 2017 preparing for the 2018 launch of commercial sales of recreational pot — which comes with new rules and new taxes. While criminal records were wiped out, cities tried to figure out where the pot stores should go and who should run them . The new rules say you no longer need a note from a medical professional — Dr. Feelgood or otherwise. You need only be 21 years old, with money.

10) Raiders move Autumn Wind Williams (left) and fellow fans were not able to persuade the Raiders to stay in Oakland.

It was never supposed to happen. The National Football League was never going to allow a team to play in wicked Las Vegas — until this year, when it voted to do just that. The Oakland Raiders, who broke Oakland’s heart in 1982 when they moved to Los Angeles, broke it again when they agreed to move to Sin City in a year or two. It seems that money talks, in Las Vegas and everywhere else.

