East Bay Hills Fire (Oakland-Berkely, CA - October 1991) » Wind Changes

The main battle continued until approximately 1930 hours, when the wind finally abated. The smoke and heat changed from pushing ahead of the fire to rising vertically as the wind eased off. Within a few minutes, a cool damp ocean breeze began to push the products of combustion back into the bum area. This stopped the uncontrollable advance of the fire, but left a huge perimeter of blazing homes that continued to expose adjacent structures.

The battle against these fires continued well into the night around the entire five-mile perimeter of the fire. From time to time the wind would pick up, and the burning intensity would increase for a few minutes, showering the area with new sparks. Crews worked to build a safe perimeter around as much of the fire as possible, including attacking structure fires and shutting off burning gas lines.

CDF hand crews were used in some of the wooded areas, particularly in Claremont Canyon and along the Piedmont border, where fire had spread to a wooded hollow next to the cemetery. Bulldozers were used to clear a fire break in Claremont Canyon.

The major concern was that the wind would return in the morning, so plans were made to bring in even more resources, to overhaul as much of the perimeter as possible and to be prepared for a new outbreak. A priority was placed on relieving units that had been in operation for as long as 10 hours. The strike teams that were arriving from the earlier requests were assigned to relieve tired crews. A request for 30 additional strike teams was made at 2030 hours, plus 10 more helitack units at 2200 hours. Berkeley requested two additional strike teams to report to its staging area. These resources were ordered with the anticipation that they would travel during the night and be available for assignment in the early morning hours.

The OES Overhead Team arrived at the Command Post during the evening to assist with the development of a structure for extended management of the incident, mobilizing state government resources to support Oakland. The Staging Area was moved to the Alameda Naval Air Station around 2200 hours, where facilities were available to support a base camp for several hundred firefighters and an inactive runway area could be used to stage apparatus.

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