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

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punctuated by a stark forest of chimneys. Broken water pipes hissed, and a dangling gutter bumped limply against a blasted stuc- co wall. A chain saw rasped. The stone Bud- dha on someone ' s doorstep smiled. A jade-colored urn looked untouched. The wheels of a child ' s wagon had melted Into black puddles, and what had been the hubcaps of a Por- sche were frozen streams of sliver metal. Street lamps lay shat- tered on the street where they crashed when the poles hold- ing them were eaten through by fire. Wires were strewn every- where. As the sun came up, where a wooded neighbor- hood had been the moming before, a for- est of chimneys stood In a gray blue haze. The chimneys went on for more than a mile, from Highway 24 on the North end to Florence Avenue on the South. With the skyscrapers of San Francisco In the dis- tance, they faded West toward the Claremont Country Club and a cemetery, and East down steep slopes to Highway 13. The University ' s out- pouring of help was heartfelt and Impres- sive. The ASUC building welcomed refugees and later became a Red Cross disaster re- lief center. On Hallow- een. Fraternity Row opened Its doors to children who had been burned out of their homes. The Ath- letic Department, which had been paid $160,000 by ABC for televising the Novem- ber 2 Cal-USC game, donated $100,000 to the Chancellor ' s Emer- gency Relief Fund. Within days, Cal had arranged to lease Its Presentation High buildings to the Bent- ley School, the only East Bay school to burn. At the Alumni House, fire victims were almost outnum- bered by UC staffers offering help with housing, transporta- tion and financial aid. The most Ironic as- pect of the East Bay ifire Is that people knew that It was com- ing. In an Interview In 1973, forestry professor Harold BIswell had wamed of a count- down to disaster In the Berkeley-Oakland Hills. Cedar shake roofs, he said, are about the easiest type to catch fire. He also feared that a winter freeze such as the one In December 1990 that killed many eucalytus trees would be fol- lowed by an autumn fire feeding on the dead wood. As BIswell put It, It could be the most disastrous wildfire that has every struck California. The University ar- ranged a symposium In Zellerbach Auditorium to share the Universi- ty ' s expertise with the community. Named Wind and Fire. it un- derscored how correct Blswell ' s prediction had been. Mechanical engi- neering professor Pat- rick J Pagnl, an expert in fire engineering, drew on the past in dis- cussing the hot Santa Ana-like weather that sparked and fanned the East Bay fire. On the Zellerbach screen, Pagnl projected the results of a 1973 anal- ysis by John Monteverdi, then the official campus weath- er observer. Monteverdi had found that in an average year. Berkeley has alDOut four days of this type of weather. Three of those days fall In October, and two of the three fall In the last half of the month. So the October 20 fire had come along right on schedule. Perhaps the most ex- traordinary memory to take from the devas- tation of this fire Is the sheer will of the firefighters and the un- sung heroes who vol- unteered to beat back the fire. Exhausted firefighters and emer- gency workers from across California la- bored tirelessly without sleep, fueled only by coffee. College stu- dents, carpenters and neighbors lifted shov- els and fire hoses to save expensive homes headed for certain de- struction without their efforts. Two Cal students, Michael Ferry and Pete Dehn, furiously shov- eled dirt onto the flames threatening the Ixickyard of a house owned by someone they never met. Their effort saved the resi- dence near Grizzly Peak Boulevard from the fire. Others direct- ed traffic, delivered meals and offered their couches and spare bedrooms to the homeless families and to the thousands who had to evacuate. While many ques- tioned how a small grass fire had turned Into a killer Inferno, none doubted that the Berkeley community would be galvanized Into an outpouring of magnanimity. — by Andy Dong BERKELEY HILLS FIRE 17

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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

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arte a la fresco