Fire Contained; 14 Dead and 1,000 Structures Razed : Disaster: Damage is estimated at $1.5 billion in hills above Oakland and Berkeley. Thousands are homeless.

Flames that delivered unspeakable torment to the hills above Oakland and neighboring Berkeley subsided Monday, and with the death toll standing at least at 14 and the homeless numbering in the thousands, fire officials said they held the upper hand.

“We do in fact have the fire contained,” Oakland Fire Chief Lamont Ewell declared at a morning press conference.

By conservative count, more than 1,000 structures were leveled by the blaze on the western edge of the Berkeley Hills, including hundreds of homes and one 433-unit apartment building, Ewell said later Monday. Five thousand people remained evacuated, many in Red Cross shelters and hotels, and about 8,000 residents were without electricity or gas service. Officials said 148 people were injured.

Damage was tentatively estimated at $1.5 billion for what was, by any measure, one of the worst conflagrations in California history.

Residents who frantically fled the hills Sunday, meanwhile, labored to get back to their property, dodging roadblocks set up by police, walking in through the denuded landscape and clamoring in despair at anyone who stood in their way.

More than 1,000 firefighters from across the state guarded the perimeter of the containment zone Monday, watching for new flare-ups. Around them, whitish smoke still seeped through the canyons, but the winds that powered Sunday’s blaze idled somewhat and the humidity was noticeably higher. Not that it mattered much in the grieving hours after the firestorm.

“I’ve never seen anything so devastating in my life,” said 80-year-old Rosa York, who spoke for thousands.

The scene that greeted those who made it back home was surreal: Where once the woodsy Oakland hills neighborhoods straddled peaks known as the Berkeley Hills, telephone poles now spurted flames. Others had fallen, slicing through smoking hulks of cars, trailing their wires at chest level and threatening returning residents.

Burst water mains poured forth, as if to taunt firefighters who had trouble tapping the water supply at the height of the blaze. Chimneys, like sentinels, marked the ashes of homes in the once-fashionable and expensive terrain.

As residents wandered back in, their cries of despair--and occasional relief--competed with the thumping pulses of helicopters assessing the damage from overhead.

Coroner’s officials and other authorities on Monday released the first tentative identifications of the dead.

One was a police officer, 32-year-old John Grubensky, who was trapped in the Hiller Highlands area in the northern reach of the fire as he helped with the evacuation. A second Oakland police officer, Alexander Boyovich, 33, was in extremely critical condition after he was struck by a car during the fire.

Another fatality was Oakland Fire Department Battalion Chief James Riley, a 25-year veteran who also reportedly died trying to rescue others.

Two others were identified by the Alameda County coroner as Cheryl Turjanis, 25, and her mother-in-law, Aina Turjanis, 64, both of Oakland. Others believed to have died while fleeing the fire have not been identified, and there were unconfirmed reports of residents still missing.

Both Riley and Grubensky died near the fire’s origin. The locations of the other deaths were not immediately released. Fire officials said the relatively high number of deaths was attributable to the speed of the fire, increased by gusting warm winds and abundant dry brush. Roads clogged with fallen power poles might also have blocked the path of escape for some, officials said.

“What happened to many people is that they didn’t view it as dangerous enough to leave when they should have, before it was right on top of them,” said Oakland Fire Lt. Chris O’Rourke. “They waited until the last second and then gathered up their valuables. But at that point, what was valuable might not have seemed so valuable. You can’t wait till the last second.”

The fire began Saturday in brush along Grizzly Peak Boulevard near the Caldecott Tunnel, which links inland Contra Costa County with Oakland. Firefighters knocked down Saturday’s small blaze, only to have it flare anew and rush out of control as they watched Sunday. Strong and hot winds, said O’Rourke, “pushed the fire down the hill like a freight train.”

The cause of Saturday’s initial fire was not immediately known. Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris said it did not appear to be arson, although arson teams were dispatched to search for the dead. Oakland Police Chief George T. Hart said the involvement of the arson team “does not suggest a crime.”

Harris, Gov. Pete Wilson and others toured the area by helicopter early Monday.

“You could see terrible devastation,” said Wilson, who on Sunday signed a state declaration of emergency for the fire area. “Charred ruins of hundreds of homes.”

Wilson said he would try to reach President Bush personally to seek a federal disaster declaration, which would open the door for potential relief for fire victims.

The officials denied that any change in the strategy for fighting Sunday’s fire could have made a difference. Wilson, asked whether enough firefighting airplanes were available, said local crews “said that they had all the aircraft that they could use.”

Mayor Harris, asked why at one point firefighters were unable to pump water, said generators had failed and that emergency replacements had to be brought in to run the pumps. “We didn’t anticipate that this would occur as rapidly as it did,” Harris said.

Wilson, speaking later at a Sacramento press conference, cited last year’s devastating Santa Barbara fire and the Oakland-Berkeley blaze as demonstrating the need for fire-retardant roofs in wooded residential areas.

“Suddenly, amid the charred ruins of all the destroyed homes, there seems to be one that is intact, almost untouched,” Wilson said. “In almost every case, the homes that were standing were those with tile roofs.”

The fallout of the fire was felt across the Bay Area. At UC Berkeley, where close to 2,000 students were evacuated as the fire crept to within five blocks of the school’s dormitories, classes were canceled Monday. But school officials announced late in the day that they will resume Tuesday.

Rush-hour travel in the Bay Area was likewise fouled, since the fire occurred near the arteries used by inland residents to reach Oakland and San Francisco. Most major roads were opened by midday.

The blaze was the second calamity to strike the Bay Area in as many years. Just last Thursday, residents paused to remember the second anniversary of the 7.1 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake, which claimed more than five dozen lives. Forty-two died in Oakland alone, when the double decks of the Nimitz Freeway collapsed, crushing dozens of commuting cars.

With this disaster, too, the focus was on Oakland. Like the Santa Barbara fire of 1990, Sunday’s inferno claimed a slice of East Bay society: the rich who lived in panoramic multimillion-dollar homes, college students with few possessions, families and couples and single residents, young, old and middle-aged.

Mixed in with apartments and condominiums were award-winning modernistic homes and classic, turn-of-the-century estates, according to local architects. “It was a true architectural garden,” said Roger Montgomery, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Environmental Design. “There are dozens of historical works and there are a number of works by contemporary architects up there.”

As with all fires, this one testified to the capriciousness of nature. Its fury and delicacy was symbolized at one house, burned to the ground along with all of its neighbors. The fire left unmolested, atop a three-foot pile of rubble, a single white teacup and saucer. Nothing else recognizable remained.

Along with other survivors who skirted police lines, Allison Finlay and Tom Hover walked uncertainly up Buena Vista Avenue on Monday afternoon, turned the corner and saw rubble where their house should have been.

“That’s what’s left,” said Finlay, trembling. “It was such a pretty house.”

Chris and Carol Argentos stood nearby, embracing two friends. In borrowed clothes, with his wallet and everything else he owned having burned to ashes, Chris Argentos worried openly about the fate of a friend who was last seen fighting the oncoming flames.

“He was right up there in the middle of it all,” he said of his friend, Phil Loggins. “We’re already checked all the hospitals, the shelters, and burn centers. We have to check everything everywhere. We need to find him.”

Down the street, in a painful counterpoint, came the glee of Kathy Cooke and her three brothers as they spotted their family’s home, a survivor despite its cedar shingles and redwood deck. It was the only intact house in sight. On the sooty front window, someone had scrawled a message: The cat was safe.

“We just assumed it was gone,” Cooke said of the house. “It didn’t even occur to us that it would be there. I feel so bad for everyone else. I thought we were among them.”

At evacuation centers and along the police lines that kept thousands of residents away from their homes, many yearned only to know, whether the news be good or bad.

“I’ve been through a thousand deaths,” said Lyn Flitton, sobbing. “I just want to know one way or another. I can’t stand waiting any longer.”

Some saluted the firefighters who fought the blaze--more than 1,000 of whom remained on guard through the day Monday waiting for more trouble.

Miriam and David Wilson stayed through the night, guarding two homes in the Claremont neighborhood near the northeastern edge of the fire’s footprint. Firefighters, she said, were working in the canyons below the homes until dawn, cutting trees to prevent a recurrence.

She lamented that some firefighters were unable to get water out of hydrants in the area.

“Under the circumstances, they were magnificent,” she said.

But one man who stayed with a friend to protect the friend’s Oakland home accused Berkeley firefighters of standing idle nearby as flames swept closer at noon Sunday.

“They said, ‘No, it (the fire) is Oakland; we’re from Berkeley. We don’t work on fires from Oakland,” said the man, who refused to disclose his name.

While some residents stood in apparent shock, others dug through the ruins for whatever could be salvaged. Marilyn Bates, for example, had fled her home on Broadway Terrace on Sunday with a few photographs and a few clothes. But she forgot a diamond ring she had received 40 years ago.

Monday she combed through what used to be her bedroom and found the ring, blackened but intact. Triumphant, she placed it on her finger.

“We came back primarily to find the diamond ring,” she explained, and cracked a few jokes.

“You have to be able to laugh at things or life gets too grim.”

In Piedmont, a small city encircled by Oakland, no houses burned there, due to a hospitable change in the wind. Dozens on Monday hiked up a canyon road to view the burned area.

“I never thought it would happen here,” said Brad Niedling, a lawyer. “I always thought it happened in Southern California.”

But it did happen here, in an area known more for fog than devilishly hot winds. And yet even Monday, as shock and depression bore down, there were optimists who contended that their neighborhood would flourish again, like an urban phoenix.

In the courtyard of his badly damaged home on Hillcrest Road, near the border of Oakland and Berkeley, real estate agent Frederick Mitchell was gathering his possessions.

He and his friends had stayed behind to fight the blaze Sunday evening--and thought at first they had saved the home.

“At first it was one little ember we could put out,” he said, “and then there were 50.”

The roof caught, and the 12-room house went up in flames. But, Mitchell hastened to say Monday, “It will fly again.”

Times staff writers Cathleen Decker, Sonni Efron, Ralph Frammolino, Ashley Dunn and Paul Feldman contributed to this story, as did researcher Norma Kaufman and campus correspondent Jennifer Packer.

Paths of Destruction: Facts and Figures

The sequence of events that led to the East Bay blaze included:

SATURDAY:

1) 11:30 a.m.--A small brush fire breaks out near the Caldecott Tunnel. It is put out after burning about less than seven acres.

SUNDAY:

2) 10:53 a.m.--The fire starts again in roughly the same area, fueled by tinder dry brush and gusting winds. Evacuations begin.

3) 11:30 a.m.--Residents of the 433-unit Parkwoods Apartments flee as the building burns.

4) Time unknown--Six people, including Oakland Police Officer John Grubensky, perish in fire.

5) Noon--The landmark Claremont Hotel is evacuated. Building is saved.

6) 12:30 p.m.--The first victims of the fire begin arriving at Alta Bates-Herrick Hospital in Berkeley, the closest burn center.

7) 1 p.m.--The Lawrence Hall of Science on Centennial Drive is evacuated.

8) 1 p.m.--The American Red Cross begins opening emergency shelters for evacuees.

9) Early afternoon--The fire cuts a swath from Hiller Highlands down to Broadway Terrace, destroying numerous houses but leaving others undamaged.

10) 3:30 p.m.--UC Berkeley orders the evacuation of the Clark Kerr Campus, an undergraduate housing complex and the Smyth Fernwald Apartments, a family housing complex. Eighteen fraternities and sororities also are evacuated.

11) 7 p.m.--The California College of Arts & Crafts is evacuated.

MONDAY:

8:30 a.m.--Oakland Fire Chief Phillip Lamont Ewell announces that the fire is essentially contained.

East Bay Blaze

Statistics by mid-afternoon Monday included:

The numbers:

Deaths: 14 confirmed

Injured: 148

Structures destroyed: More than 1,000

Acres burned: 1,800, an estimated 1.5 square miles

Estimated total losses: $1.5 billion

Evacuated: 5,000 people

Without electricity: 7,800

Without gas service: 8,000

Equipment used:

Firefighters: More than 1,000

Police officers: 460

Engines, trucks and water tankers: 370

Helicopters: 20

Airplanes: 10

Source: Los Angeles Times, wire services

Major Fires in California

Here are the worst fires in terms of structures destroyed in California history: * October, 1991--More than 1,000 structures in Oakland and Berkeley were destroyed in a fire that killed at least 14 people.

* June, 1990--More than 641 homes were destroyed in a 4,900-acre area in Santa Barbara County. Two people were killed.

* September, 1923--Flames destroyed 584 structures in a 130-acre area in Berkeley.

* November, 1961--More than 484 structures were destroyed in Bel-Air.

* September, 1970--About 403 structures were ravaged and 10 people were killed as several blazes roared in a single wall of flames 20 miles long from Newhall to Malibu.

* September, 1988--An arson-caused wildfire burned out of control in Nevada County, destroying 312 structures and more than 33,500 acres.

* July, 1977--In the Sycamore Canyon area of Santa Barbara County, 234 structures were lost.

* October, 1978--A juggernaut of flame from eight fires destroyed 230 structures from Malibu to Agoura and Mandeville Canyon.

SOURCE: California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and L.A. Times news files.