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Berkeleyside invited readers to submit their stories about the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm. Here we publish the first of three selections.

By Valenta de Regil: October 19th, 1991 — A Saturday, hot like the weeks prior, I was working to make a more full work week out of one that’d had short days due to the extreme heat, painting at a beautiful house on one of the lower hairpin curves on Alvarado Road. A modern sleek house, with a large interior wall I had painted in a lovely wash of sweet and spicy red tones the previous month. My architect client was throwing a fiesta that evening and encouraged me to stay, which was sorely tempting.

As I drove away that afternoon, leaving my tools and job-book behind, I felt something pushing me out of the neighborhood. It was a game day and, with the heat, there was an oppressive vibe around Tunnel Road and Claremont Avenue… lots of cars and people, traffic and blockage.

I hadn’t stayed due to a birthday celebration at the Edinburgh Castle in San Francisco, and a night of drinking and eating fish and chips, but after a week of heat and more than average thirst, the morning was a haze of pain. There were two attempts to wake me by a dear friend, but I wasn’t able to take in the information. The second try included the phrase, “Your friends’ house is burning down, right now!” I was far away across the bay in Marin, and with my severe headache, there was only grey in my visual of the day. I watched flames on a small TV screen, and cried. All I remember of the day is a blackish grey color. Ash.

The top of Alvarado had been the locale of a lovely mid-century classic in which I had created my first decorative finishes a few years earlier. Midway down the street was a house which contained sculpture and various belongings, and a history of a long string of friends who had resided there. It was the first place I was able to gain access to after the fire. All I found was ash and melted glass, a Stonehenge sculpture vaporized into gasses.=

I had once lived below that road in Claremont Canyon, and my personal history with the neighborhood was deeply engrained in my heart, which was sorely broken for all who had lost everything — far more than my colorful walls and some belongings. The sentimental beauty has returned, the hills revived with love, with people strong in desire to live there with respect to the past. … Continue reading »