East Bay Hills Fire (Oakland-Berkely, CA - October 1991) » Unified Command Structure

Around 1600 hours, implementation of the Incident Command System on a large scale began to bring the incident into focus at the Command Post. The map on the following page shows the extent of the fire by this time. Prior to this point, Oakland and Berkeley had each operated independently, with their own Command Posts. A Berkeley officer had been assigned as a liaison at the Oakland Command Post. The CDF units were working under their own command structure, primarily on the north and east sides of the fire, with limited contact between CDF and the Oakland or Berkeley Incident Commanders. San Francisco had established a secondary command post at the Claremont Hotel to manage its resources, which were operating entirely on their own radio channels, with a liaison officer assigned to maintain contact at the Oakland Command Post.

A Unified Command structure was implemented, involving Oakland, Berkeley, and CDF command officers, and the overall incident was restructured to divide geographic and functional responsibilities into manageable components. It took several hours to make a complete assessment of the situation and to develop an organization structure to deal with the complex incident. To simply cover the perimeter of the fire, three branches and 15 divisions were established.

Branch 1 incorporated the area from the Claremont Hotel to the top of Grizzly Peak.

Branch 2 covered the area along the south side of the fire, from Grizzly Peak to Highway 13.

Branch 3 covered the Rockridge District, from Highway 13 around to the Berkeley front on Tunnel Road.

To assist in establishing an effective incident management structure, two caches of 40 portable radios each were requested from the Alameda County Mutual Aid system. These radios provided additional channels to organize the communications network for a large scale incident.

An “Overhead Team” was also requested from the state Office of Emergency Services (OES) to bring in personnel experienced in managing large scale incidents, including specialists in logistics, communications, and finance, along with supporting equipment. The Overhead Team would take several hours to arrive.

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