A vegetation fire spread to several acres and caused damage to one notable estate Tuesday in the Berkeley hills.
The fire was first reported around 11:40 am Tuesday near the 1000 block of Panoramic Way. As KPIX reports via the Berkeley Fire Department, the vegetation fire had burned "at least" two to three acres on the hill above the UC Berkeley campus.
It has been named the Panoramic Fire.
There were no reports of injuries, and the department initially said that one structure was threatened by the fire. Winds were said to be steady around 3 miles per hour, and no evacuations have been ordered.
As the Chronicle reports, the East Bay Regional Park District, Cal Fire, and the Alameda County Fire Department are all responding, and the park district has done at least one aerial drop of water on the blaze.
While forward progress of the fire has reportedly been halted, the fire did spread to the roof of a property at 1001 Panoramic Way. As the Chronicle notes, the shuttered mansion is known as Skyfall Estate — and the owner was in some hot water back in 2015 for hosting unpermitted weddings and other events at the state.
Eerily, the fire comes on the 35th anniversary of the Tunnel Fire, also known as the Oakland hills firestorm of 1991. The disastrous, wind-whipped fire was actually sparked in the hills of southeastern Berkeley the day before, and that fire was improperly extinguished. On Sunday, October 20, 1991, 65-mile-per-hour winds helped reignite what remained of the earlier fire, which eventually burned over 2,800 homes and killed 25 people.
This is a developing story.
