Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Fire!
We visited my sister-in-law and her family this weekend. They live in Kensington, a beautiful town in the hills above Berkeley overlooking San Francisco Bay. It’s a city of winding streets and dead ends, where locals whip around hairpin turns and visitors crawl at 10 mph. It’s a city where every home has a killer view.
Last night, this was the view.
Angel Island caught fire. We went out for dinner at 6:30 PM, got back by 8, and noticed the blaze soon thereafter. It was hard to miss. Initial news reports were laughable (ten acres? You call that ten acres?) The SFGate story seems much more credible (400 acres).
I’ve been to Angel Island. It was back in ’83, when my lab went on a picnic. We took a ferry there and explored the ruins. These days, Angel Island is primarily a campground (fortunately, all of the campers were evacuated without injury last night), but it has served in the past as a cattle ranch, quarantine facility, discharge depot for troops returning from the Spanish-American War, and Japanese/German POW camp during WWII. Briefly, the island hosted a Nike missile base.
By morning, firefighters had done their job and we needed binoculars to see the smoke. I drove down Grizzly Peak Blvd., something I had never done in all my years at Berkeley (not having any wheels might have had something to do with that). What spectacular views! The East Bay was an expanse of evergreens and homes leading out to the Bay; both bridges were in full view; the City’s skyline was crisp against a cloudless blue sky. Without binoculars, you couldn’t even tell there had been drama the night before.
D.
Kensington? No way.
I used to live at the Albany, Berkeley, Kensington border, right near Colusa Circle.
I saw pictures on the TV of the smoke coming off Angel Island, but I like your picture better.
It took me YEARS to figure out that Alcatraz Street in Berkeley is named that because on a clear day, if you’re at the top of Alcatraz looking out into the bay, you can actually see Alcatraz Island. Some of the views from the hills are insane.
oh, wow. SCARY. i’m glad everyone got out safely though…
My SIL lives just a little way away from Marin Circle. They have a killer view — did I mention that?
I never knew that about Alcatraz Street 🙂