The city raised to at least 1,800 its estimate of the number of houses destroyed by a brush fire that left at least 14 people dead and reduced neighborhoods in Oakland and Berkeley to smoking ruins.
The Red Cross said Monday night that it surveyed 55 percent of the burned area on foot and counted 1,800 houses and 442 apartment units destroyed.Deborah Reisman, spokeswoman for the Oakland Office of Emergency Services, said the city had adopted that block-by-block count as its own. Earlier Monday the agency had said more than 400 houses were destroyed in the two communities.
The 1,800-acre fire was one of the worst in U.S. history, rivaling the Great Chicaco Fire of 1871. The city put damage at $1.5 billion before its estimate of houses destroyed was raised. It had no new estimate of the cost.
The blaze, which fed on brush parched by five years of drought, was ignited by wind-tossed embers from a smaller fire Saturday, said fire Capt.Charlie Fasso. The fire was contained Monday, but firefighters continued to battle hot spots Tuesday.
Thousands of residents who spent Sunday night in shelters ventured home Monday.
"I lost the house I raised my children in. I lost the house I married my husband in," City Councilwoman Marge Gibson Haskell sobbed.
The death toll rose to 14, Mayor Elihu Harris said at a news conference. At least six other people were reported missing. City and state officials also said nearly 150 people were injured and 5,000 evacuated.
Reisman said the discrepancy in the city's estimates of homes destroyed was "just a question of getting information."
"This is an area that's very hilly so residential development is not as predictable as, say, in a tract housing development where there are X houses per street," she said.
Red Cross spokesman Gregg O'Ryon said he couldn't estimate how many more destroyed homes would be found.
Insurance agents surveyed damage and started writing claim checks. Gov. Pete Wilson said he is asking President Bush to declare an emergency, a move that would open the door to grants and loans for rebuilding.
In Oakland, the streets of the blackened neighborhoods Monday were ghostly quiet, gray smoke swirling above the ruins.
It was a sharp contrast from the day before, when the blaze roared out of the hills above Oakland and Berkeley, racing through fashionable neighborhoods tucked between woods and canyons, many with sweeping views of San Francisco Bay.
"The fire started rushing around and jumping from one place to another," said 81-year-old Rosa York, who fled her home with her husband, Robert. "It was like the dance of the devil. We were lucky to get out."
A few residents found their homes intact when they returned.
"I couldn't believe it because most of the rest of the block was gone," Ralph Duncan said. "Sometimes you wonder why you're the lucky one."
Adrienne Dinges had no such luck. "You see bits and pieces of your life in the ashes," she said.
The fire ranked as one of the worst in U.S. history and the worst in California since the fire that followed the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. A June 1990 blaze in Santa Barbara destroyed 470 homes, and a 1923 fire razed 584 homes in Berkeley.
Some of the houses that exploded into flames were architectural treasures dating from the 1890s, wood-shingle structures perched on hillsides and edged by eucalyptus forests.
One of the most famous structures, the 236-room Claremont Hotel, was saved when firefighters stopped the blaze on a ridge above the landmark.