“It’s better to be safe than sorry”: Berkeley recommended ending the evacuation

Berkeley's “extreme fire weather” alert has ended, but fire and weather officials are warning residents to continue taking precautions as dry air and winds from the northeast continue Saturday.

“The risk of additional inflammation remains today,” the National Weather Service warned the Bay Area in a forecast Saturday. “Any fire that actually breaks out has the potential to spread quickly, with gusty winds and near-record fuel levels.”

The Berkeley Fire Department sent out an alert Friday afternoon advising residents of the Berkeley Hills to evacuate preemptively, citing “extreme fire weather” from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. Saturday.

Overnight winds through the hills were at the lower end of the forecast. The highest gust recorded at the Berkeley Lab weather station since midday Friday was 22 mph, but farther east in the hills there were gusts into the 40s, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

For Saturday, the National Weather Service forecast winds of 16 to 21 mph from the northeast, decreasing to 8 to 13 mph in the afternoon, but also gusts of up to 36 mph.

The “Red Flag Warning” will continue through Saturday, but the NWS has predicted the winds will change direction sometime Saturday evening, bringing cooler, moister air from the San Francisco Bay back over Berkeley.

“Don’t let lower wind speeds fool you into thinking the fire threat has passed. Wind speed is only one factor,” the NWS said in a short-term forecast Saturday morning. “Relative humidity is another factor and it will continue to be poor. There were at least six new fire outbreaks in the Bay Area and Central Coast on Friday. Every effort should always be made to prevent a wildfire, but especially today.” One occurred in neighboring Oakland, where a fire near Interstate 580, the Keller Fire, burned 15 acres and damaged two homes.

Berkeley Fire Department Chief David Sprague said residents should continue to keep roads clear in Berkeley's high fire danger areas and be prepared to evacuate Saturday if necessary.

“We are at a point where inflammation becomes uncontrollable very quickly,” Sprague said. “We have this policy from experience and I think it would be foolish of us not to follow this policy. … We had a lot of discussion yesterday about, “Okay, let's go, do we do it or not?” And of course the conversation turns to the question, “What if we don't do it and something happens?”

Some mountain people left the country, others stayed

In addition to residents' own safety, one reason for preventive evacuations is to clear roads so that fire engines can reach fires if they ignite. Berkeley commissioned a citywide evacuation study from New York-based KLD Engineering last year, but is still waiting on consultants' recommendations, according to the city.

Kathleen Kelly, a member of the Berkeley FireSafe Council and a resident of a high wildfire danger zone near Euclid Avenue and Cedar Street, said she chose to stay home.

Kelly said her car is filled with gas just in case, and “I have a road bag in the car and another road bag in the house.” Kelly said she has lived in her home for 42 years and discovered that the Wind was not “strong” on Friday. “That doesn't mean I'm a fool and think (a fire) couldn't happen,” she said, adding that her house was built on the site of a house that was destroyed in the 1923 city fire that raged across the city City erupted, burned hills and burned into downtown Berkeley.

“It’s not that difficult for me to say goodbye,” said Kelly, outlining her evacuation route.

However, she said she supported the city's decision to issue the warning. According to her, the main aim is to help elderly and disabled residents for whom a quick evacuation would be difficult, if not impossible. Berkeley is “trying to be very careful about this,” Kelly said, recounting several neighbors who she said are in this situation.

Kelly noted that her neighborhood uses a phone buddy system to check in at times like last night. Some of her neighbors have decided to leave, she said. “Half of them are gone,” she said.

Helen Babalis, who lives part-time in Richmond, was house-sitting around Keith Avenue and Shasta Road in Berkeley on Friday. She had been there for a few weeks.

Like Kelly, she decided to prepare but stayed home. She also said many of her neighbors had left.

“My car was left full of valuables,” such as her computer, Babalis said. “I checked Watch Duty and CalFire every few hours.”

The strong winds predicted for last week never materialized, Babalis said: “And yesterday the only wind blew early in the day and then not a leaf moved all night.”

City Council member Susan Wengraf, a Hills resident, also chose to remain in her home Friday. She said one of her neighbors left for an Airbnb in Alameda earlier this week after the Red Flag alert went off last week, and another left Friday to stay with her son in San Francisco.

“We packed our bags and parked our car on the downhill road and decided to monitor the situation very closely,” she said. “I spoke to the boss at 7:30 a.m. and he gave me great confidence in how prepared we are.”

She added: “I went to sleep with my eye open and got up several times to check the wind.”

The city's decision was the right one given Berkeley's geography and demographics, she said.

“It’s preventive. It is based on the fact that we know that our infrastructure is not sufficient to allow people to safely evacuate if a fire actually breaks out. “Roads are not able to handle the high density of population and vehicles, so we opted for a preventive policy,” she said.

“I know there are concerns about crying wolf. But it's better to be safe than sorry. I welcome politics. It’s very proactive and based on the data we have,” Wengraf said.

Meanwhile, residents of Kensington, in the hills north of Berkeley, received a notification from firefighters and police around 6 p.m. on Friday that a similar extreme fire alarm had not been issued. Some Kensington residents also receive Berkeley alerts.

“Some residents in Kensington and El Cerrito received a 'Zone Status Change' from the Genasys Protect App because some zones in Berkeley changed their status to 'Alert' due to extreme fire weather conditions through Saturday morning,” the notification said.

“Contra Costa County has no status changes or evacuation orders and the El Cerrito/Kensington Fire Department is in contact with the Berkeley Fire Department. If an evacuation order or warning is issued in Kensington, you will receive a message from the municipal warning system.”

No barbecue parties, no fireworks, no cannons for homecoming

UC Berkeley sent out a “WarnMe” message Saturday morning in the middle of its homecoming weekend, telling students and visitors that smoking, grilling and other types of open fires are prohibited on campus during the festivities and as long as conditions comply the red flag remains prohibited. The school also refrains from using “live guns” and “pyrotechnics” during the game, and BFD positions a fire truck near Memorial Stadium.

Sprague said the city is surveying residents on the evacuation alert to find out what worked and what didn't.

Berkeley police sent extra patrols to the mountain neighborhoods overnight and, aside from a group of young people having a barbecue, “had a quiet night,” Sprague said.

Some hotels in Berkeley offer “fire weather” rates. Because it was a weekend and Cal's homecoming, several rooms were already booked, but about 10 guests at the La Quinta Hotel on University Avenue and four at the DoubleTree by Berkeley Marina took advantage of the discount, according to hotel reservations staff.

The severity of a fast-spreading wildfire driven by northeasterly winds through parched foliage and undergrowth may be lost on those who have not experienced it. There hasn't been a deadly firestorm in Berkeley since 1991 – Saturday marks 33 years to the day since the deadly tunnel fire broke out – but the danger remains in the hill neighborhoods.

“You can search for the major fires on YouTube and Google and see what the conditions are like, but even then, if you're in that situation, it's completely different,” Sprague said. “Not only are you dealing with strong winds that blow smoke, embers and fire into the air, making it difficult to breathe and blinding you, but also the stress and fear of a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Your body is in fight or flight, your decision making is impaired.”

And if you did not evacuate preventatively, you must do so under these conditions.

“The stress of this situation for someone who has never been through it multiple times or spent a lot of time preparing cannot be overstated,” Sprague said.