My home was two streets above the Parkwoods, Charing Cross road. It burned about 20 minutes into the fire which was prior to this video. I was home at the time and left as my house was on fire. The escape route was very difficult leading to the deaths of neighbors as well as Sheriff officer, Grabinsky, who promoted our evacuation. All these years later it still lives with me, you never shake something like this.
I remember this fire well. It did not affect me directly but it still causes anxiety to this day. I live in a high fire danger area in the Bay Area and I'm going to move. I can't take the anxiety of fire season anymore
The fire began on a Sunday morning. At the Berkely Newman Center church the closing song was "Send down the Fire of your Justice." What they did not know was that some who were at mass singing that song had homes already burning.
I was in the Navy stationed aboard the USS Texas in Alameda. My Captain allowed five of us to go and fight the fires. We hung off the back of a hook and ladder truck until we were in the middle of it. I helped evacuate homeowners who would not leave and I carried some out kicking and screaming. Minutes later their houses were gone. Absolute devastation. The heat, that wind and the flying cinders created a surreal environment. I still think about that night when I pass through the Caldecott Tunnel.
We did not realize what was goingon. Husband Tom was on watch on his ship. It may have been the Texas or the Arkansas. I loaded up the kids and we went on that side of the bay. When we left base, interstate we normally took was closed. Re routed to a bridge much farther down the coast. Got lost. Had a fender bender. I rem it well.
I was 12 y.o and me and my friend was running down when I heard a lady yell help....we turned an found her and the whole back part of her house was burning but she wouldn't leave w/o her dam cats....so we grabbed all 4 of them and we got her out right b4 her house fell....she kept in touch with us for awhile till she passed in 08
I remember this when I was 5. My school burned down and we were evacuated from our house just below skyline. To this day explosions and fires scare me more than guns or being assaulted. Once you’ve faced this, humanity becomes kind of a write off.
i saw the smaller fire the day before and i got very scared and told my friends that the whole mountain could go up in flames so easily. the next morning, i woke to those winds and laid there waiting for the sound of the firetrucks. i didn't have to wait long. then i left to go to sta rosa for the day and got half way down Grizzly Peak and rounded the bend to see hundred foot high flames moving towards me at 60 mph. i flipped a uee and a guy dumped his bicycle and jumped on my hood and i floored it to get out of there. we ended up being evacuated twice as the fire progressed.
My grandfather lived in a penthouse unit in the Parkwood Apartments. He and his new wife were traveling in Europe and lost everything. Well, almost everything. He had parked his big boat of a Cadillac in one of the subterranean parking lots. He picked the corner spot, half surrounded in cinder blocks. When the workers were clearing the rubble from that building, they found my grandfather’s car relatively unscathed! After a little TLC it was up and running again!
Probably the best video evidence of firestorm vortices imbedded in what was probably a pyrocumulus cloud. Downslope winds were very strong that day, but swirling embers and things spontaneously bursting into flame. Different beast.
Referencing time, just 2 yrs before this the bay was struck by one of the worse earthquakes and people were rebuilding homes, freeways, and infrastructure. Just when we were getting back to regular life, this fire breaks it. It was quite a time for us.
@@victudhaus remove organic material from the outside of house and away from house. Fire Brands ignite debrit around the house...not direct flame from trees or bushes.
When that movie came out firefighters everywhere instantly felt like they gained 12 inches in dick length, so the t-shirt is more the norm than an outlier.
I was 13, living in Monterey at the time. We were watching the 49er game. John Madden pointed out that there was a bunch of smoke coming from the Berkeley hills. They showed it on TV as the smoke was just starting to rise to the sky. Little did we know it would later turn out to be a massive fire like this.
My God Mother lived in Oakland during this time. I remember being afraid to go to sleep because I thought the fires would reach all the way down to where she lived. Saw power transformers explode one by one through the night. I still have ash that fell from the sky that day in a bag. Don’t know why I saved it to this day. That fire was tragic.
I live in Oakland Hills.. fire didn't reach my area but ashes covered my yard and smell was unbelievable. After it was over we drove along highway 13 and for miles all the way to Berkeley there were nothing but chimneys
Apocalyptic. Reminds me of similar videos shot in Canada and Australia, of people in jammed traffic amidst flames and smoke and blowing embers, and suburban streets and homes suddenly transformed unthinkably.
Crazy seeing the pandemonium of people fleeing. And the firefighter getting his helmet knocked off, with the (pressurized) water no match for the wind.
I remember this fire. It's so scary watching these videos of people just running. I feel badly for what looks like a Groom, carrying his Soon to be bride's wedding dress over his arm...would love to know that story. That was a devastating day.
We were on the Rockridge end of the fire and evacuated our apartment to a friend’s place. Then we all had to evacuate there. We spent the night at a spot where we could watch the fire travel across the hills. Meanwhile our parents in the Midwest were being told that the fire would burn all the way to the Bay and phone lines were jammed so it was hard to get word to them.
My wife and I were in Europe at the time. We were on a steep hill on the downslope of Buckingham, and I always thought the house would go in an earthquake, but it survived 89. To this day I still think of something and a moment later realize "No that's gong."
While I wasn’t there and did not experience that fire....I’ve done a lot of research into that fire....I was reading that with in the first hour of the reignite the fire destroyed nearly 800 homes. I also read that when the fire was at its peak intensity, it was destroying one home every 11 seconds.
Vicky S Our friend lost his home on Kerry Drive, Area 4. Its almost at the opposite end downwind from Crestview Dr where Coffey Park started burning at Area 1. He was late to leave after loading his Suburban. He saw houses starting to burn 20-30 seconds apart. This same fellow estimated the gusts at 70mph and said that the sparks blowing on the road and on his windshield like ''driving too fast in a snowstorm with your bright lights on''. His wipers were plastic and they melted and started burning by the time he got to safety. Last night I went through my videos taken 2 days after last Christmas which show porcelain tiles and tub surrounds, closeups of broken glass from bedroom windows and a burned out car. I need to clean up the language.... a little ticked at Lies by Grace saying that laser beams and microwaves melted all glass and ceramic at 5000 degrees. You might enjoy this link about Coffey Park and its rebuild. How many idiots post stuff about the government stealing land and killing people. Complete B.S.! Santa Rosa fast tracked the building permits and the Army Corps of Engineers arranged to clean up the debris on each lot. There are a huge amount of pics to scroll through. Around 14-20 pics in is a wind direction map that shows why the fire jumped Highway 101 and cooked Coffey Park. Click the right arrow.... www.google.com/search?q=coffey+park+strong&newwindow=1&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_qNaXh_DeAhVjlVQKHQolDVEQsAR6BAgFEAE&biw=1280&bih=569#imgrc=q5-Ix_M-0rsD3M:
I was 11 when this happened. I went outside and saw a huge plume of smoke blowing like crazy it was nearly horizontal. I ran back inside and told my parents. Soon after a cop came by in his loudspeaker telling everyone to GTFO right now so we did. Long story short, from our nextdoor neighbor and up over the hill out of sight was reduced to ashes. Our house, 10 feet away from our neighbor's, was fine except melted rain gutters. It still hard to believe. My mom shows those pictures to her new neighbors to this day who are shocked because it's all been rebuilt and unless they were raised in the area they don't know about the fire.
Incredible memories 29 years ago I remember a friend and I were riding barred trying to get as close as we could to see what was going on I had my scanner and we took BART to downtown Berkeley and then try to take BART to Rockridge station but it was closed and we got as far as Ashby station and walked up Ashby to almost Claremont Boulevard people are gathered there it was amazing and awful at the same time
Holy shit what a disaster. I watched from about 10 miles away in the East Bay, and the sky just got redder and redder. I could not imagine what it must have been like trying to get away.
You see all those good people TRYING to leave the area? Nawadays you see people trying to take selfies and videos, resulting in injuries or their own death.
I was driving on 24 that day, and got caught in it., I was probably one of the last few cars that had to drive into it, then turn around at tunnel road. The firefighters threw three people into my car from the apartments. It was pretty crazy. I totally know what your grandmother went through.
a few years ago I was a resident of Canada. One of the smartest Climate scientist and weather broadcaster said the most violent and fast moving fire storms is when Outdoor temps are 30C, Winds over 30 KM/h and humidity less then 30%. Also, area must be in a long prolonged drought. These were the exact conditions that Paradise was experiencing. Fire brands cause most of these fires as they race down wind and pile up like snow from a bizarre any organic matter ...bark dust or sawdust or pine needs in gutters under decks or along side the house will catch fire. Then the flames from the burning debris ignore the siding and gutter.
@devilsforkdigital1490 that's not actually burning gasoline on the road. It's actually a pile of burning wood embers being blown by the wind. Since the embers are pooled together, it looks like liquid gasoline on fire. It's not actually tho.
A wise old woman: If and when car back-up occurs during an emergency if you would pack as many people per car and leave the rest all humans will make it thru. I've seen it done. Please think about this, practice it, we did on the high school football field after. It worked! Such a beautiful thing to see as well. The Beatles' Song "Come Together" playing over field speakers. Good luck and cover your airways with a wet tee shirt/towel anything that you can get wet. Cover Airways. Hurry.
No, there was a small fire there the day before, can't remember why, I think it was a homeowner burning debris.The fire re-ignited from the Diablo winds.
@@ptsteinbach I helped rebuild the house next door to where the original fire started- it was in the Oakland hills , north of 24 before the Caldecott Tunnel. The property next door had a rare for the area collection of junk cars and such, a little bit like a sketchy compound, and what I was told was that the day prior whoever lived there had been doing some welding or grinding work in bad fire conditions, and a small fire started, which got knocked down but not 100% out- then the next day came 90+ degree weather with 50mph gusting winds, and even though they had posted a watch at the site a spark quickly became an inferno... it was a really, really extreme weather day.
@@knucklevision Yeah, I got stuck on 24 eastbound going up the hill to the Caldecutt when all hell broke loose. It was crazy, all traffic had to merge and go down tunnel road. Total chaos.
It saddens me that the same thing happened recently in Lahaina, Hawaii. I can't believe that climate change has gotten this bad. We, as a human race, need to do something about this as soon as possible. We came together to fix the ozone layer by banning CFLs worldwide, so we need to do the same for greenhouse gasses, or our planet will end up like Venus. We now have a runaway greenhouse gas problem that can't be stopped. The more forests that burn, the more co2 is put into the atmosphere which will warm the earth and cause more permafrost to melt, releasing more methane that is 3 times worse than co2. The world is now on fire. We have fires in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Canada, Maui, Siberia, Spain, and Italy. It really saddens me that the boreal forests are now burning. There have recently been fires above the arctic circle. Boreal forests are one of the fastest warming biomes on Earth, and warmer and drier fire seasons are contributing to expanding wildfires. Russia's Siberian region experienced particularly bad wildfires in 2021 which burned nearly 45 million acres (18.16 million hectares) of Russian forest in 2021.
Cell phone video was better back then than they are today! That is beautiful footage,no shaking around ,no pixels,just perfect . Metro CPS was so much better in the 80's.
@@kingssuck06 None of them were even born yet when this happened. Also the reason wildfires burn so intense is because eco-retards banned the fire departments from burning the forest to control debris and litter pileup on the forest floor as well as removing all the dead trees because it harms all the delicate little flowers and animals. That was in the 1980's. Well guess what? 40 years of highly flammable pine needles and ferns and leaves all sitting there like a big tinderbox waiting for one spark. I used to work for city sanitation burning old christmas trees for disposal. One tree alone took at least an hour and a half or 2 hours to burn itself out. Pine sap is exceptionally flammable once dried. It's like gasoline.
Perhaps you should do some research into fire science, extreme fire behavior and California fire history. Extreme wind driven fires like this one have happened MANY times through out California fire history.
Your biddness, so should we stop building homes in tornado alley? How about homes on the east coast due to hurricanes and other “perfect storm scenarios. Should we not build in California at all because of earthquakes? It doesn’t matter where you go, there will always be that possibility. How ever at this point....I think citizens should have some fire fighting equipment of their own. If they have good defensible space around their home, as long as some one was there to defend the home it should survive. Citizens need to be ready to grab hand tools and battle the fire. The government has demonstrated many times over that they can’t be relied upon to protect you or your home.
