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The Claremont Hotel and The 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Hills Firestorm

by Jay Cross

Driving home from Emeryville, I recalled some great paths above the Claremont Hotel that BPWA director Helen Wynne had showed us on several Saturday walks.

The Claremont Hotel is a wonderful, wooden landmark looking out to the Bay from its perch in the Oakland Hills. It's quiet here today. Usually is. Frank Lloyd Wright pronounced the Claremont "one of the few hotels in the world with warmth, character, and charm"

The Hotel enjoys an amusing history. A farmer from Kansas struck it rich in the Gold Rush, bought 13,000 acres, built a castle on the estate, imported British grooms for his horses, conducted fox hunts, and married off his daughter to an English lord. His castle burned to the ground in 1901.

Frank Havens won the property in a game of high-stakes checkers at the Athenian Club in Oakland and began building a resort, only to be delayed by the financial panic of 1906. Eight years later, Havens threw in with a fellow who had struck it rich in the Klondike, and the sprawling hotel was ready in time to profit from the Panama-Pacific Exhibition celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal and the rebirth of San Francisco after the big quake of '06.

After Prohibition, the Claremont had a rough go of it because a California law forbade the sale of liquor within a mile of the U.C. Berkeley campus. An entrepreneurial female student measured various routes to the Claremont and found it to be several feet over a mile from campus. The Terrace Bar opened and business improved. For a while, the Claremont was the largest convention space in the Bay Area. Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and Tommy Dorsey played the Garden Room. In 1998, the Claremont was purchased by the owners of La Quinta, The Doral, and the Arizona Biltmore.

I parked on Claremont Avenue around 4:15 pm and wandered through the gate, past tennis courts, behind the parking sentry shack, and up the path that's just barely visible from the back of the parking lot.

The Oakland-Berkeley Hills Firestorm

Thirteen years ago, the most costly fire in United States history claimed 25 lives, destroyed 3200 houses and apartments, burned 1,500 acres, and caused $1.5 billion in losses. The firestorm nearly burned the Claremont Hotel, which would have put the U.C. campus and the entire City of Berkeley in jeopardy.

By any definition, this was a horrendous fire. My family was driving along the frontage road by the Bay in Berkeley. We looked to the hills and saw flames shooting up all over. A few comments from firefights on the scene follow; read the transcripts at the Virtual Museum of San Francisco for the full story.

The crew from San Francisco Engine 25 – operating on foot – first attacked the fire along the 100 block of Alvarado Rd. with water pumped by his apparatus 500-feet uphill from the Claremont Hotel.

... citizen-volunteers en route from the Claremont Hotel started showing up at the command post and asking `What can I do?' These volunteers included 15 students from the University of California at Berkeley who had equipped themselves with shovels, and told hotel officials they wanted to "assist the hotel any way they could." Several of the UC students assisted in spraying the eucalyptus grove behind the building with water from the building's hose line. Other citizens flocked to the hotel, eager to assist in the firefighting efforts.

"We were the strike team at Hiller Highlands," said Fremont Capt. Dickinson, "and found all the bodies, so we knew how fast this thing could move. From that point we figured it would hit us pretty quick."

" I saw a few trees just explode; it gets your attention when they go, and you know its not a dream – this is for real. I watched in amazement,"

Rising and erratic fire-driven winds in excess of 65 mph preheated structures and foliage, and temperatures approached 2,000 degrees F. Large homes and large trees exploded in flame, and they would then generate firebrands which were picked up by the fierce, hot winds – which in turn ignited other structures and trees – and soon they too would explode.

In some places aluminum engine blocks and parts of burning automobiles melted and ran into the gutter.

Paths and Fire

Oakland and Berkeley are blessed with streets that hug the contours of their hills. It drives newcomers crazy when they're trying to find somebody, and hot-rodders are bound to be disappointed since they will rarely get out of second gear on the twists and turns. But the views are magnificent, the neighborhoods beautiful, and the feeling natural.

It was the Romans who first came up with the grid pattern for city streets. It's much easier to take over a grid city -- and to hold onto it. Grids make for quick entry and access. If you need to make a speedy retreat from an organic layout like that in our hills, you can't rely on the streets. Thus, if you expect earthquakes, fires, and/or mudslides, it's a good idea to cut some paths from the upper reaches to the exits. That's the raison d'être for many of our hillside paths. The 1991 firestorm proved the theory correct.

Here's my 30-minute walk, highlighted on our official Map of Berkeley Pathways. Note the wiggly nature of the streets. Also, the location of the paths.

I walked on the grounds of the hotel, up the Short Cut, up Eucalyptus Path to Sunset Trail, up Willow, back along Alvorado Road, down and back up the top end of Eucalyptus, down Slater Lane, down Evergreen Lane, down Evergreen Path, through the Claremont's eucalyptus grove, around the hotel, and back to the car.

Eucalyptus Path

Eucalyptus Path heads straight up the hill from Alvarado Road several blocks, ending up at, lo and behold, Alvarado Road again (having snaked its way up the hill the long way). Eucalyptus is what I consider an exercise path. I have yet to meet the person who can gingerly scoot up these steps without getting out of breath. Just look at the slope:

Fire Department Reports

"Over to the north of us was the stairway [Eucalyptus Path]," he said, "and my thoughts were that there were strike teams above us, but there weren't. We did a reconnaissance mission and met firefighters who were pulling five-inch line they had taken from our rig" down the path.

Shortly after 3:15 p.m., Assistant Chief Hickey drove Mini-pumper 43 part way up Alvarado Rd. as far as Eucalyptus Path. "I couldn't get any farther because there were rigs, hoselays and downed power lines blocking the roadway. I saw Paul Tabacco who gave me a progress report, and then we got some additional people up from the San Francisco command post." [The SF command post was the Claremont Hotel.]

Fremont Engine 1053 had earlier been assigned to the hydrant at 115 Alvarado Rd. at the foot of Eucalyptus Path to supply the five-inch lead to Union City Engine 1 and the three-inch lead to San Leandro firefighters. This three-inch lead was further extended up the hill by engine relay at about 4 p.m. Eucalyptus Path is a 1,000-foot stairway in excess of 40 percent grade which cuts across the uphill switchback from the 100 to the 600 block of Alvarado Rd.

Pleasanton Captain Paul B. Molkenburhr with a crew of ten hiked from the 100 block of Alvarado Rd. to the top of Eucalyptus Path, leaving the apparatus at Alvarado Rd. and Bridge Rd. "We had been ordered to lay three-inch lines taken from a Castro Valley engine and extend a previously laid line farther up Eucalyptus Path."

The captain said: "After we hand-stretched the three-inch line and put in wyes, we put one-and-one-half-inch lines to work, and at the top of the path we attacked and suppressed the fire in a large A-frame structure." After suppressing the fire at the top of Eucalyptus Path, Pleasanton Capt. Molkenburhr walked back down Alvarado Rd. and surveyed hydrants, but found them all dry between Bridge Rd. and Eucalyptus .

Pleasanton Engine 61 was brought along the road as the PG&E employee walked ahead cutting through fallen wires. The crew of the apparatus also cleared away fallen transformers and street light poles. The engine was brought to the top of Eucalyptus Path, where the crew laid 150 feet of five-inch hose down hill.

This five-inch hoselay supervised by Hayward Battalion Chief O'Sullivan began at the foot of Eucalyptus Path and paralleled an existing three-inch line. Leads were pulled by firefighters and citizen-volunteers from each end by hand and were joined along Eucalyptus Path. This effort took more than one hour and the total length of this hoselay was in excess of 2,500 feet at greater than 45-percent grade.

Sunset Trail

Sunset is a delightful little path. It's flat -- a breather after walking up Eucalyptus. Look closely and you'll notice things like this stump. Looking beyond the stump, you notice that all the houses above the path are new, built since 1991. Sunset Trail deadends at Willow. I walked up Willow to Alvorado Road.

Evergreen Path

After walking by some houses that escaped the fire, one comes to Evergreen Path, a dramatic chute down to the Claremont Hotel's backyard. Someone's put the picturesque rusting hulk of an old tractor in their garden. Evengreen Path itself is not that attractive: construction work, an ugly right-angle turn, and a cluttered tennis court alongside. The views, however, are spectacular. You creep up behind the tower of the Claremont.

During the 1991 fire, students from U.C. Berkeley wet down these trees in the Claremont's backyard to save them.

Sunset from the Claremont

The sun was setting as I headed back around the Claremont Hotel and then home.