OAKLAND --
The Oakland Fire Department marked the 17th anniversary of the East Bay Hills firestorm on Monday with a tribute to the victims of that fire.
Some 25 people died in the 1991 fire including Oakland Battalion Chief James Riley and Oakland police Officer John Grubensky.
Deputy Chief James Williams had been with the Oakland Fire Department for just a year when he received a call on his day off that the he was needed to fight the fire. He said he left from church and felt both fear and amazement when he arrived on the scene of the conflagration around 1:30 in the afternoon.
"This was unlike any fire we'd ever seen before," Williams remembered. He said typically a firefighter can find some place to shield himself from the intense heat of a fire, but that day there was no place to find relief. "We had a couple of places where some of our people who are now retired had to jump into pools for safe refuge, because the fire was blowing up over their heads."
In all, Williams said the fire destroyed some 3,500 homes and caused $1.7 billion dollars in damages. But he said the department is much better prepared now to handle a large urban-wildland interface fire, thanks in part to better mutual aid agreements with neighboring fire districts, more aggressive vegetation management and new firefighting technologies.
The fire department is also rolling out a new generation of firetrucks which firefighters say are better suited to maneuver the narrow streets in the Oakland hills. The new trucks have a sharper turning radius and higher ground clearance than traditional firetrucks.
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