Skip to content

bright orange flames cascade down a hillside to the right of a residential street.

Oakland Hills neighbors alerted each other through group chats, used hoses to put out fires as area burned

on October 20, 2024

Around 1:45 p.m. Friday, Benjamin Walker awoke to the sound of firefighters in the backyard of his Sanford Street home. 

He jumped out of bed, looked outside and saw the oak tree on the fence line of his yard burning.

“Holy shit!” he said aloud.

Still in a post-nap daze, he scrambled to figure out what to do next.

“I’m still waking up. I get my stuff together and get out there,” he told Oakland North Saturday. “The firefighters tell me to turn on my hose. So I started putting out little fires. But basically, at that point, most of this area was already burnt.”

Shortly before Walker woke up, Pamela Jordan who lives two doors down, noticed that the sky had suddenly grown dark. When she looked outside, she saw neighbors in the street spraying hoses, and arching flames behind her house.

“We called 911 but couldn’t get through,” Jordan said.

  • A plan drops red fire retardant on a smoky fire that rises above a squat green-sided house.
    A plane drops fire retardant on the Keller Fire in Oakland (Contributed by Kaia Stimpson)
  • A photo taken from a car window shows the bottom of a tree on fire.
    The view of the Keller Fire from a car window (Contributed by Kaia Stimpson)
  • Photo taken through a car windshield shows flames in a tree and smoke rising over a neighborhood of low houses.
    The Oakland Hills in flames as viewed from a car windshield (Contributed by Kaia Stimpson)

While they waited for help, residents on  Keller Avenue, Mountain Boulevard, Sanford and surrounding streets ran door to door alerting one another and helping each other evacuate, an hour before Alameda County issued an official evacuation order for the area. 

After a harrowing two days, most residents were back in their homes Sunday night, as Cal Fire reported the blaze 85% contained. But by that time, it already had burned 15 acres in the Oakland Hills, destroyed two homes, displaced more than 500 residents for two days and threatened many other structures.

At a briefing Sunday morning, the Oakland Fire Department said 50 firefighters were still on the scene addressing hotspots. The remaining 43 residents on Campus Drive who had been kept at bay, were expected to be allowed back Sunday evening.

The Keller Fire, as it is being called because of its proximity to Keller Avenue, started 33 years almost to the day of the deadly Tunnel Fire, which swept through the Oakland Hills on Oct. 19 and 20, 1991. In the Tunnel Fire, 25 people died, 1,520 acres burned and more than 3,000 homes were destroyed.

The conditions for the Keller Fire were eerily similar, which strong winds stirring dried grass, leaves and trees. As in 1991, flames jumped from the freeway to homes and into eucalyptus trees, Oakland Fire Chief Damon Covington said Saturday. But this time, he added, the Fire Department was more prepared and immediately had assistance from Cal Fire and nearby departments.

“We had a little bit more preparation because we’ve learned from those fires that we’ve had  throughout the last several years, as well as the 1991 fire, of the level of preparation that’s required,” he said.  

A brown and beige two-story home sits at the top of a driveway on a curved street, a canopy of trees overhead.
Benjamin Walker awoke to the sound of firefighters in the backyard of his Sanford Street home. (NeEddra James)
And orange and white long one-story house sits atop a low hill on a curved street, with towering green trees behind it.
Pamela Jordan, whose Sanford Street home is pictured, noticed a dark sky before the evacuation order came. (NeEddra James)

For residents, staying connected helped. Todd and Tina Stimpson, who also live on Sanford Street, a block east of the fire, said neighbors communicated via group chat to alert one another. They filled buckets with water and hosed down each other’s homes.

Tina Stimpson noticed the fire as she drove home from downtown Oakland, an uneasy feeling turning to alarm as she climbed the hill.

“We could see the fire from the freeway on our way back and thought it was maybe at the 580/13 interchange area,” she said. “But as we got closer, we saw it was closer to our house. As we pulled off the freeway at Keller, we rolled down our window and you could feel the heat. It was that hot.”

When she pulled onto Sanford, she saw neighbors in action on the street. She and Todd joined them.

“We have a really good neighborhood community where we watch out for everybody,” Tina Stimpson said.

  • A brick home with severe fire damage has boarded up windows and a burned roof as well as a burned lawn.
    The fire damaged home of Monica Albakari’s friend. (NeEddra James)
  • A concrete path leads to a burned out house, the lawn burned to dirt on both sides of the path, the house's windows are boarded.
    A fire damaged home in the Oakland Hills. (NeEddra James)
  • A couple dozen firefighters in neon yellow jackets gather around fire vans at the bottom of a tree-lined hill.
    Firefighters gather at the bottom of a hill, where the Keller Fire was raging. (NeEddra James)

Residents throughout Oakland tried to lend support. Monica Albakari, who lives a few miles east of the fire, went into the hills with her husband, Lee, to check on a longtime friend whom they were unable to reach by phone. They arrived at their friend’s home, a gift bag in hand, to find it severely damaged. Their friend owns a small business in San Leandro, and Albakari said many people will want to help her.

“She does a lot of work in the community, so I know she’s going to get a lot of support,” she said.

On Saturday, residents had queued up beyond the police roadblocks, waiting for the green light to return home.

One family was told they’d be let back in at 5 p.m. But they weren’t sure if they’d be allowed back home for good, or only to retrieve some things, because it wasn’t clear if their home was in the red zone or just beyond. They spent Friday night sleeping in the car. They waited to hear if they would be able to spend Saturday night in their own beds.

(Top photo contributed by  Kaia Stimpson)

UPDATE: Evacuation lifted for some after wildfire burns two homes, threatens others in Oakland Hills

Fire

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Oakland North welcomes comments from our readers, but we ask users to keep all discussion civil and on-topic. Comments post automatically without review from our staff, but we reserve the right to delete material that is libelous, a personal attack, or spam. We request that commenters consistently use the same login name. Comments from the same user posted under multiple aliases may be deleted. Oakland North assumes no liability for comments posted to the site and no endorsement is implied; commenters are solely responsible for their own content.

Search for Stories:

Photo by Basil D Soufi
logo
Oakland North

Oakland North is an online news service produced by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and covering Oakland, California. Our goals are to improve local coverage, innovate with digital media, and listen to you–about the issues that concern you and the reporting you’d like to see in your community. Please send news tips to: oaklandnorthstaff@gmail.com.

Latest Posts

Scroll To Top