The Oakland Hills Fire

October 20, 1991

On that beautiful, windy, fall Sunday, my attendant Dorothy and I were out on Telegraph Avenue looking at the street vendors making jewelry. Suddenly it became dark and we noticed people looking up. We also looked up and then we heard sirens. Then we saw a cloud of smoke and flames coming from the hills. I got so scared that I couldn’t look up anymore, so we went home. When we got there my mom told us that there was a fire in the Oakland Hills. My parents called our friends Alan and Laura and Jan because they lived in the hills and asked them if they wanted to stay at our house. Alan and Laura slept in our garage with their two cats, Sherman and Snoozer. My dad is allergic to cats and Sherman hated him anyway. Jan slept in my computer room on a lounge chair.  She used a wheelchair and didn’t have anywhere else to stay.

My bedroom was upstairs and I could see the fire from my window. It made me so sad to think that people were dying there that I made my mom pull my shade down.  I was afraid to sleep. Later I found out that twenty-five people died in the Oakland Hills fire.

The next day, school was closed.  I hung around the house and watched TV. My mom started packing in case we had to evacuate. I wanted to pack my letters from Guatemala that spell my name. (I couldn’t find them anywhere else?) But we found out that we didn’t have to evacuate. And I still have the letters!

It was our friend Laura’s fortieth birthday and she had bought a chocolate cake at Ladyfingers Bakery, planning to eat the whole thing on her birthday. But when the fire came she left it on her kitchen counter.  By Wednesday the fire was under control and they were letting people back in to look for their houses. Alan and Laura didn’t know if their house would still be there, but it was, and so was Laura’s chocolate cake. And so she ate the whole thing.

The next day school was open and everybody was talking about it. My mom prepared an emergency kit but she didn’t pack my letters.