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The Oakland Hills Firestorm occurred on Sunday October 20 , 1991 , almost exactly two years after the Loma Prieta Earthquake . The fire is often referred to as the '''East Bay Hills fire''', since it struck the hills in both Oakland and Berkeley, California . The fire killed 25 people and injured 150. On the 1520 acres destroyed were 2,449 single-family dwellings and 437 apartment and condominium units. The economic loss has been estimated at $1.5 billion. The fire also threatened to destroy the historic Claremont Resort hotel. Among the contributing factors that led to the Firestorm were Föhn Wind s (regionally called Diablo Wind s), which are hot dry winds that blow off shore (over land and then out to sea). Thick, dry Vegetation close to many dwellings, and non-native "exploding" Eucalyptus trees also contributed to the firestorm. The Oakland Hills Firestorm was one of several fire disasters that have occurred with regularity in the San Francisco Bay Area . The first was the fire following the Earthquake Of 1906 in the 60-year-old city of San Francisco . Twenty years later a fire in the hills of Berkeley nearly leveled that community. A succession of hill fires burned smaller areas of the Oakland hills in the 1970s and 1980s as construction of homes continued in the area, creating a densely populated residential area on steep hillsides at the edge of an extensive open space parkland ( East Bay Regional Park District ). This disaster was included as one of several different disaster scenarios in the game '' SimCity 2000 ''. REFERENCES |
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