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The firefighters from six departments who came to Tilden Park Sunday were training to fight a major fire – everyone’s worst nightmare, but always a threat in the East Bay Hills. 

“We’re getting ready for war. We’re ordinary people doing an extraordinary job,” said Hugo Godoy, an East Bay Regional Park District firefighter. 

Included in the more than two-hour para-military mutual response drill were units from the East Bay Regional Park District, Berkeley, Oakland, Moraga-Orinda, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention. This was the second such drill this month for the forces that will band together in the event of a major blaze. 

The trainings have taken place each year since the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley hills fire. Before that time, a fire would draw a response from a single department, which would send one to three engines. Now 10 to 15 engines would respond to such a call. With each successive year of drills, the participating agencies work on different aspects of fire control. 

From the staging area in Mineral Springs, Berkeley firefighter Karen Parroff, acting as the staging manager, deployed engines to Equestrian Camp and Inspiration Point where they gathered to fight the mock fire. 

Assistant Chief David Orth said in a real incident the first firefighters on the scene would attack the fire, and take command. Companies rushing in to help them would be deployed from any workable location nearby. 

Communications among firefighters in a wildfire setting are different from the day-to-day radio frequencies that each department uses for contact among its own members. For the mutual response drill, commands were delivered over a specified tactical frequency known as “White Two.” 

“We established communication where we could all talk to each other,” said Battalion Chief Rob Goodyear of the Moraga-Orinda department. 

The Radio Amateur Communications Service or RACES volunteers also were present at the drill. In the event of a fire they would help deploy food and water to firefighters. 

Orth explained that much less water is needed to extinguish a grass fire than a house fire in the city, because a house fire releases more heat. Trees, however, require more water than grass, he said. 

Eagle Five, one of two helicopters in the East Bay Regional Park District’s firefighting unit, buzzed a grove of trees above Equestrian Camp and dropped water from a “Bambi bucket” that holds 144 gallons of water. The bucket swings from a 30-foot long cable attached underneath the copter. 

Pilot Andrew White flew reconnaissance as he would in a real incident to see the progression of a fire, and he flew to Lake Anza to scoop out water and fill the bucket twice. 

Dropping water from a Bambi bucket slows down the aggressive head of a fire, safely giving the firefighters an edge in their battle. 

In one flank, 10 firefighters climbed the grassy hill to a ridge carrying about 1,200 feet of yellow hose in 100-feet lengths that they clamped together. The different lengths of hose belong to the different fire departments. 

The East Bay Regional Park District spread out a water supply bag next to its water tender truck in Equestrian Camp to supply the firefighters heading up to the ridge. The large plastic bag resembles a child’s portable wading pool. The bag that can hold 3,000 gallons of water is an adjunct to the water tender with an 1,800-gallon capacity. A pump on the water tender fills the bag as a sort of holding pond. 

EBRPD firefighter Godoy summed up the session, saying the successive training sessions makes for perfect responses.