Yes, it can survive in soil, although I don't know how well it would survive fire. Many of the affected oaks have very thick bark and are well adapted to season

Yes, it can survive in soil, although I don't know how well it would survive fire. Many of the affected oaks have very thick bark and are well adapted to seasonal fires, though. It's thought that a major route of infection is late spring rain, when the weather is warm. As rainwater drips through the canopy of infected trees, the pathogen releases it's spores into the water, which then drip on neighboring trees and into the soil. Matteo Garbelotto of the UCB forest pathology lab claims that four years after an especially late spring rainfall event, you usually see a wave of dead trees (it takes about four years for the pathogen to kill a tree).