Lieutenant Trainor left the Communications Center at Central Fire Alarm Station in San Francisco at about 10 a.m. Sunday, and after a brief stop in the City, drove to his home in the Oakland hills.

"I was going along [Interstate Highway] 580 at 11:30 a.m. and I saw a small amount of smoke in the Oakland hills, in the same area where I knew there had been a fire on Saturday.

I went on to my home near Arrowhead and Colton -- which later was in the fire evacuation zone -- and sat down to watch the 49er game," he said.

"While watching the game, I looked out the window behind the TV set and saw all that black smoke. This was of great concern, so I went to the garage and got my turnout coat and leather helmet and then jumped in my car.

"I drove down Colton Rd. to Mountain Blvd.," he said, "and eventually got near the bottom of Broadway Terrace. There was practically no apparatus there because the fire was wildly out of control, so I began helping people evacuate from the area of Broadway Terrace and Pinewood, which was in danger of being overrun by the fire.

"People were frightened. One woman who lived in the Parkwoods Apartments complex was standing there, watching her home go up. She was terrified."

Lieutenant Trainor said, "I tried to evacuate as many people as I could and then left. I went back to my own house, which had been ordered evacuated, and got all my valuables out. My room mate helped me gather up my possessions and then took them to a friends' house in the City.

"I then went back," he said, "to the fire at about sundown. I jumped on to a CDF rig that was on Broadway Terrace -- it was a triple [combination pumper] -- and we tried to set up a perimeter line at Broadway Terrace to make a fire stop, but I could see that we could do no good because of the fire volume, so we drove up and down streets where firebrands had started spot fires ahead of the conflagration, and we put those out.

"Some houses in the area were fully involved, so we just had to let them go -- there was nothing we could do. We didn't go into any buildings, but we were able to fill the tank of the engine at hydrants and put water on exposures and spot fires.

"We had a mixed crew of citizens, CDF personnel and some mutual aid firefighters on the apparatus. Conditions were so chaotic that I wasn't able to get any of their names, but they did good work.

"We were able to make some saves," Lt. Trainor said, " We made some in the vicinity of Duncan and Broadway Terrace and a couple more on Glenwood Glade. We saved about a dozen houses in the area, but another dozen were destroyed in the conflagration. I stayed there all night and then went to my home, which fortunately did not burn."