University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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DEVIL WINDS s unday October 20, 1991 came on mean from the start. Fiery tiot Santa Ana style devil winds whipped down from the northeast at 50 mph. The winds emptied their heated bluster upon the ridge of hills that rises augustly before the Pacific to gourd the edge of the Eostbay. Here, with o breath-taking view of the bay sprawled below, generations of families had crafted mansions and cottages amid on oasis of fragrant eucalyptus trees and gurgling creeks. The crime and traffic of the urban grit were just minutes below, but seemed on entire ocean away in the serene splendor of quiet, monied neighborhoods in the Berkeley Hills. The conflagration began at 10:47 a.m. as the tiniest of sparks. Just off Buckingham Boulevard, below the Hiller Highlands, an ember from the previous day ' s brush fire found new life at the hot stroke of the devil wind. A small flicker found plentiful fuel in bushes and scrub turned to brittle wicks by five years of drought and a record root-killing freeze. Within 15 minutes, 100 acres had become a voracious wall 14 BERKELEY HILLS FIRE LI. o —I o

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Disappearing Landscape The fire destroyed more than homes and cars but also personal memorabilia, art collections, and books. Writer and Berkeley professor Maxine Hong Kingston fled her home, leaving a two-thirds completed novel to burn. Harold Wilensky, emeritus professor of political science, lost half a manuscript based on two decades of research. And computer scientist Richard Newton lost two years of potentially ground-breaking research in the complex field of computer-aided electronic design. of hellfire rampaging in all directions. By then, the initial spiral of smoke had become a thick gray- black blanket billow- ing from the hills to San Francisco. The smoke turned the day into a deathly twilight and the sun to blood red. Ashes and leaves start- ed to rain down as far as Candlestick Park 15 miles away. Once the conflagra- tion raged to a full head, it engulfed en- tire blocks at five min- utes a gulp. Some de- fied heat-blasted death and stayed to hose down their home, dig firebreaks — do anything they could to beat back the raging monster before them. Fraternity members evacuated their hous- es and immediately proceeded to the front-line to offer vol- unteer assistance. Others hung in until the sheet of flame got so close it seared the skin from their arms and faces and they were forced to drop hoses and ladders and flee. By mid- afternoon, more than 1,000 firefighters from all over California were attacking the flames with everything from engines and hand held hoses to hel- icopters. It was the biggest wildland fire in Califor- nia history, and one of the biggest fires ever. At least $15 billion in damage across a two mile swath. At least 25 dead. Among the dead were Cal alumni ' 61 M.A. Gail Allison Baxter ' 58, ' 86; Maybelle Nissen Bios ' 26,; Philip Loggins ' 71 Ph.D. ' 74; and 18- year-old sophomore S e g a I I Livnah, a p r e - m e d student and Alumni Scholar. By the Chan- ce I I o r ' s count, 70 faculty and 62 staffers lost houses, and some 360 students were displaced. Five thousand displaced from their homes. Some 3,390 houses and apartments de- stroyed. By the following morning, the worst of the fire was over. Hun- dreds of people be- gan to trickle back up the smoking hillsides to find if anything was left of their life ' s treasures, and the grisly search for bodies began. Five neighborhoods — Hiller Highlands, Broadway Terrace, Montclair, Claremont and Upper Rockridge - were torched into an eery moonscape. Gone were the turn-of- the-century architec- tural masterpieces crafted by Julia Mor- gan, and maverick Bernard Maybeck. In their place was a sur- real landscape of white ash, melted glass, smoldering tree stumps and telephone wires dangling like burned spaghetti from blackened poles. The skeleton of more than 2,000 cars sat burned to the hub. All over the hills, rows of homes were reduced to ashy concrete 16 BERKELEY HILLS FIRE