Pod Insights Real Survival Stories Reporter Trapped: Story Catches Fire About this episode A TV news reporter gets trapped right in the middle of his own incendiary story. Rob Roth is following up on a small wildfire in the forested hills surrounding Oakland, California - a blaze which firefighters got under control the day before. With his wife due to give birth, Rob is hoping that today of all days he can get home on time. But this routine assignment veers wildly off script. When the winds suddenly change, Rob and his colleague will find themselves stuck - camera still rolling - in a reignited inferno…
A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins.
Written by Heléna Lewis | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay, Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:03 John Hopkins? It's late morning on Sunday, October 20, 1991, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California.
1:11 John Hopkins? Just a couple of hours earlier, the sun shone against a dazzling, cloudless stretch of azure sky.
1:19 John Hopkins? Now, day seems to have morphed into night.
1:24 John Hopkins? The brilliant blue expanse subsumed beneath a suffocating shroud of harsh, dense smoke.
1:32 John Hopkins? Ash and smoldering embers swirl through the darkened air, carried along by erratic gusts of hot, dry wind from the nearby Diablo Mountain Range.
1:48 John Hopkins? In Oakland, just across the bay from San Francisco, everything seems baked in an eerie orange glow.
1:55 John Hopkins? Wailing sirens fill the city as emergency vehicles race along winding roads speeding into the surrounding hills.
2:04 John Hopkins? Here, where the slopes are densely covered in tall, ancient trees and luscious vegetation, a wildfire is devastating the landscape.
2:15 John Hopkins? It tears through the foliage and the undergrowth, gorging itself on the greenery as it sweeps across the undulating terrain, leaving nothing but charred skeletal trunks and scorched earth in its wake.
2:28 John Hopkins? It's spreading with lethal, terrifying speed.
2:34 John Hopkins? On one of the forested slopes on the outskirts of the city, blithely unaware of quite how fast the fire is moving, reporter Rob Roth and cameraman Nick Soares watch as blazing spires shoot up across the hillside in front of them.
2:51 John Hopkins? Thick plumes of smoke drift towards the two men, but they're unconcerned. The conflagration is still a good distance away from them. They don't appear to be in any immediate danger. Their news van is parked nearby, so they can make a quick getaway if needed. Besides, they're getting some great footage.
3:12 Speaker 02 The TV journalism side of it was, we're getting excited because we're getting good stuff. The beginning of this huge firestorm, which you don't usually get video like that.
3:22 John Hopkins? But then, in an instant, Rob and Nick's sense of excitement melts away. Suddenly, the winds pick up, the currents spiraling and twisting, clashing and colliding, seeming to come from everywhere at once.
3:38 Speaker 02 These winds just kept coming in and they kept swirling from all directions and suddenly this smoke got more and more and more and it felt almost instantaneously that the whole hillside was becoming engulfed.
3:51 John Hopkins? Ash and dust blow into the men's faces as fierce gusts propel huge clouds of black smoke towards them, stinging their eyes and scratching their lungs. The frenzied fire advances, acquiring intensity and momentum with every meter of ground it gains.
4:11 John Hopkins? The smoke closes in around Rob and Nick, swallowing their news van up in seconds and obscuring their exits.
4:19 John Hopkins? Behind them is a steep drop.
4:23 John Hopkins? The two men turn to look at each other as realization, horror, and disbelief set in all at once. They are trapped directly in the path of the fire that is thundering towards them. There is no way out.
4:36 Speaker 02 There was really no place to go and the smoke that had been above us is now getting closer and we kind of looked at each other and I remember thinking that this can't be happening. There was just nowhere to go.
4:55 John Hopkins? Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.
5:16 John Hopkins? In this episode, we meet Rob Roth. In October 1991, the TV reporter is following up on a small wildfire in the forested hills surrounding Oakland, California, which firefighters got under control the day before. With his wife due to give birth to their first baby today, Rob is hoping to be finished at work quickly in order to get home early. But what should be a fairly routine assignment soon takes a hellish turn.
5:44 John Hopkins? When the winds suddenly change, causing the small blaze to reignite and spread with horrifying speed, Rob and Nick find themselves trapped in the middle of one of the worst firestorms in American history.
5:57 Speaker 02 There was no obvious exit from where we were because there was smoke in three directions and then the fourth direction which was behind us. There was no way because it was just a steep drop.
6:08 John Hopkins? How is survival possible when there's no escape? They have just minutes left until the insatiable fire reaches them. It seems only a miracle can save them.
6:19 Speaker 02 And I'm thinking, you know, I'm still supposed to put up this wallpaper in the baby's nursery and all I'm looking at is smoke and flame and we didn't really know what we should do next.
6:30 John Hopkins? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.
6:56 John Hopkins? It's Saturday, October the 19th, 1991. A bright, clear day in California. Though the heat of the summer months has subsided, the weather remains warm and dry, and the parched landscape is ready for the winter rains.
7:11 John Hopkins? In the bustling city of Oakland, just east of San Francisco, autumn has well and truly begun. With Halloween less than two weeks away, houses and shop fronts are bedecked with ghoulish decorations, and the forests in the surrounding hills are awash in a blazing sea of fiery red and orange.
7:31 John Hopkins? Situated between the San Francisco Bay on its west and thousands of acres of canyons, parkland, and hills to its east, Oakland is home to more than 370,000 people. Today, among the traffic nosing its way along these suburban, tree-lined streets is a news van, loaded with cameras and microphones.
7:54 John Hopkins? Inside it, reporter Rob Roth and cameraman Nick Soares chat amiably, discussing the football game they're on their way to cover.
8:04 John Hopkins? But Rob has other, bigger things on his plate right now. Tomorrow is the due date for his and his wife's first baby.
8:13 Speaker 02 My wife was extremely pregnant. Our focus had been a little less on work and more just how we're gonna manage in packing our go-bags, and the big focus was gonna be on having this baby and making sure that, you know, everything was ready and that my wife was okay.
8:34 John Hopkins? Originally from a mid-sized town in New Jersey, about 25 miles from New York City, Rob has moved across the country to the West Coast and has built a life in San Francisco. Now, in his mid-30s, it's a settled, stable existence, with the exciting prospect of fatherhood right around the corner.
8:54 Speaker 02 We were living in a small house at the time. We'd been married a year, but we'd been together for maybe three years by then. Things were good. She was a nurse. We had, you know, good jobs and challenging jobs and a nice life.
9:10 John Hopkins? For the last few years, Rob has been an on-camera reporter for KTVU, an Oakland television station covering the San Francisco Bay Area. A full-on role that often involves working weekends.
9:24 John Hopkins? Although he's building a successful career in journalism, it wasn't exactly planned.
9:32 Speaker 02 You know, I wasn't very good in a lot of things. I was sort of OK in a lot of things, but I could write a little bit. And at some point, probably in my second year, sophomore year, they had a journalism program and made that my major, thinking that there could be a job in it when it's all said and done. As opposed to, say, being an English Lit major, journalism seemed to be practical.
10:00 John Hopkins? More than that, Rob soon discovered that he enjoyed it and that he had a knack for finding stories.
10:06 Speaker 02 Most people are interesting. They have a story in their life where they're going through something or they went through something. That's what they about my career. I was endlessly fascinated and surprised by what people go through in their life or what they've had to face. A store clerk isn't just a store clerk. He could be, you know, a mom with no husband and three kids trying to just get by. When you start hearing those things, you develop a lot of empathy for how people get through life.
10:33 John Hopkins? Rob's covered plenty of harrowing personal stories as well as natural disasters in this line of work. In 1989, he reported on the Loma Prieta earthquake, just south of Oakland, which killed 63 people and injured almost 4,000.
10:51 John Hopkins? His experiences as a reporter have given him a unique perspective on how one's life can change in the blink of an eye. It's made him grateful for what he has.
11:01 Speaker 02 I realized from it that horrible things happened to really good people, people who didn't deserve what happened to them or people who thrown no fault of their own. Something out of the blue happened, something that could happen to myself or my family or anybody.
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12:25 John Hopkins? As Rob nears the football stadium with his cameraman Nick, it seems today's assignment will almost certainly prove to be much less dramatic than some of the stories he's covered.
12:36 John Hopkins? But just as they approach the Caldercot Tunnel, northeast of Oakland, they see something that makes them pause.
12:43 John Hopkins? Fire engines are racing into the hills around the city, their sirens piercing the autumnal stillness of the day.
12:51 John Hopkins? Glancing in the direction that they're heading, Rob and Nick see puffs of smoke drifting up from the trees.
12:58 John Hopkins? Intrigued by the possibility of having stumbled on a new story, the two men decide to investigate. They follow the path of the fire engines up the narrow, winding roads that lead into the lush, verdant hills to the east of the city.
13:13 John Hopkins? But when they catch up with the firefighters, they find there isn't much to report.
13:19 Speaker 02 There was a fire in a canyon. It wasn't tremendously large at this point, and it looked like the fire department had gotten on top of it. They put a lot of resources into it. There were no houses that were burned. It was dried brush. And at the point we left, we thought that was the end of it, in that it was a little scare for the neighbors, but one of those things where it just dies down and it was barely, you know, worth mentioning by the end of the day. Because it looked like it was no damage, nobody hurt, no homes burned, no property destroyed. It was just a fire in a canyon, and everything was fine.
13:58 John Hopkins? They leave the firefighters to their work.
14:01 John Hopkins? Later, Rob returns home to his wife. But rather than relaxing, he spends his evening tackling final jobs before the baby arrives.
14:11 John Hopkins? Among these is decorating the nursery with teddy bear wallpaper. Rob works as the light fades outside, but he doesn't quite manage to complete it before going to bed.
14:22 Speaker 02 I had almost finished. I still had another part of a wall to do, and I'd be done. I figured, well, I'll just sort of get to it the next day. And that was number one on my to-do list, more than any assignment that I thought I was gonna get.
14:40 John Hopkins? The next morning is a bright, warm Sunday. While most of his neighbors are enjoying a lie-in and looking forward to a day of leisure, Rob has to head to the office. Every dollar is helpful right now.
14:55 John Hopkins? With the baby due at any moment, he assures his wife that he'll try to get out of work early. He kisses her goodbye and leaves the house.
15:03 Speaker 02 I had hoped to be able to do a story that day that I could do fairly quickly, so that if my wife went into labor, I could finish it up pretty quick and be able to go back to San Francisco where we lived, and to the hospital if necessary.
15:19 John Hopkins? At work, Rob and his assignment editor throw potential stories back and forth, trying to land on something that won't take him too long to complete.
15:28 John Hopkins? Whilst chatting, they discuss the fact that it's coming towards the end of the area's wildfire season, and there haven't been any serious blazes this year.
15:38 John Hopkins? This could be just the story Rob is looking for.
15:41 Speaker 02 I said, "Well, you know, we have the brush fire that happened yesterday, and we heard that the firefighters were up there, just kind of mopping up still." And I said, "Why don't I do a story about how our area dodged a bullet by not having any serious wildfires this year?" And we all agreed that would be a good story. And it was also a story I thought I could do fairly simply to be able to get away if I needed to.
16:04 John Hopkins? With the assignment agreed, Rob and Nick grab their equipment and jump into their van.
16:10 John Hopkins? They head up into the hills, retracing their route from the day before. They wind their way along the narrow roads, surrounded by trees garlanded with leaves of red and burnished gold. The views around here are spectacular, overlooking the San Francisco Bay, with the city itself visible in the distance. When the two men arrive at the scene of the previous day's blaze, they find the firefighters mopping up. In other words, extinguishing any lingering heat sources, such as smoldering embers or hotspots. In theory, this should prevent the fire from reigniting.
16:45 John Hopkins? Rob starts to interview the firefighters, as Nick captures footage of the operation. Everything seems under control, and work is progressing smoothly. At this rate, Rob should be back to his wife in no time.
16:59 Speaker 02 There was absolutely no concern on the faces of the firefighters. There was no sense of immediacy or worry. They were just kind of digging and sort of plowing the earth, and not much really going on.
17:13 John Hopkins? But then, out of nowhere, something changes.
17:19 John Hopkins? A slight shift in the air.
17:22 Speaker 02 The wind started to pick up and they were getting reports of other brushfires.
17:28 John Hopkins? It seems the increased wind has caused the brushfire from the day before to reignite in places.
17:35 John Hopkins? Pockets of flames have begun shooting up across the hills, and it's imperative to get them under control quickly before they can spread.
17:43 John Hopkins? With the area around Rob and Nick appearing to be safe, the firefighters jump into their trucks and race off to investigate the reports coming in, leaving the two men alone.
17:54 John Hopkins? Unperturbed, they carry on getting what they need for their assignment, intending to head back to the office shortly so they can put it all together.
18:01 Speaker 02 We were just kind of finishing up, taking pictures of what we had been doing. We just kind of continued on with no real concern. And then suddenly we saw kind of smoke above us in a hillside.
18:17 John Hopkins? Thin wisps of sinister, dark gray smoke begin curling up into the air above the hills. The tendrils merge and twine together, like shadowy, ethereal snakes slinking across the blue sky.
18:33 John Hopkins? But as the winds pick up, the wisps thicken into columns, black towers of smoke reaching up and fanning out across the horizon. And there's no smoke without fire.
18:47 Speaker 02 At first, the smoke didn't look like that much, and then these winds just kept coming in and they kept swirling from all directions. And suddenly this smoke got more and more and more. And it was probably a couple of minutes, but it felt almost instantaneously that the whole hillside was becoming engulfed.
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20:14 John Hopkins? It's around 11 a.m. on Sunday, October 20, 1991. On the forested hills around the city of Oakland, California, strong winds have reignited the smoldering remains of a wildfire. Fed by the dry vegetation that covers the rolling landscape, small blazes are springing up across the hillside as embers, carried by the breeze, land in the brush before bursting into flames. With every new fire that comes to life, the inferno grows bigger, hungrier, and more difficult to subdue.
20:49 John Hopkins? Birds scatter into the ash-swarled sky, screeching, piercing alarm calls in their flight as billowing columns of smoke swallow the sunshine, casting a sickly gray pall over the world.
21:05 John Hopkins? And filming it all as it unfolds, a reporter, Rob Roth, and cameraman, Nick Soares.
21:12 John Hopkins? The speed with which the fire has spread is shocking. But the two men aren't far from their news van. If the flames get too close, they can jump into it and race out of the hills, away from danger. After all, they're simply here to do their jobs, and they have no intention of putting themselves at risk. Rob may have covered natural disasters before, but he's not a thrill seeker by any means.
21:39 Speaker 02 I never sought out dangerous situations and I don't believe I ever, you know, put myself in one prior to that. On the other hand, I grew up kind of in the shadow of the previous generation of reporters and they covered World War II and they were on battlefields at D-Day. And I said, "But wouldn't it be something to have some sort of swashbuckling story to be able to tell to grandchildren from my days?" But I never really expected to sort of be in the situation that I was in, ever.
22:08 John Hopkins? Plus, with his first child due to be born today, Rob has even less reason to put himself in danger.
22:16 John Hopkins? He and Nick focus on moving fast, gathering the information and footage they need to complete their assignment.
22:24 John Hopkins? But as they do so, the winds continue to increase. The fierce gusts fan the flames on the hillside, breathing new life and energy into the blazes.
22:35 John Hopkins? But despite the advancing flames, Rob can't deny there's an element of excitement to this experience.
22:43 John Hopkins? They are getting some rare and unique footage, and from a professional standpoint, that's great news.
22:50 Speaker 02 As this campfire was building into something more, we're getting pictures of it, so you're actually seeing this grow. So the TV journalism side of it was, we're getting excited because we're getting good stuff. You don't usually get video like that. Now, obviously, we didn't know how big it was going to be, or we didn't really want it to be big at all, to be honest.
23:10 John Hopkins? But the winds keep blowing, and the fires keep growing.
23:15 Speaker 02 The winds kept feeding it and making it bigger, and the combination of the winds and all the brush burning, it became extremely loud, almost like a freight train kind of loud where it drowns out all other sound. I was standing no more than a foot or two from my photographer, and we would have to shout as loud as we could to be heard, even though we were standing close. You could just hear like trees breaking, that sound, and the wind is feeding this thing.
23:42 John Hopkins? These hot, dry winds are blowing towards the coast from the Diablo Mountain Range in the east. In time, it will come to be known as the Diablo Winds, the Devil Winds. At times, reaching over one hundred kilometers an hour, they have an incendiary effect on the blaze, as if it were being doused in lighter fuel.
24:05 John Hopkins? The gusts are strong enough to send ash all the way to San Francisco, across the bay.
24:11 John Hopkins? The flames howl around Rob and Nick, pounding and screeching in their ears. And, as the conflagration grows, it begins to create its own heat-driven winds, the defining characteristic of a firestorm.
24:27 Speaker 02 They have their own weather system. They create their own weather system, and there could be twenty, twenty-five mile an hour winds coming at it, but they're swirling so that they actually are fifty mile an hour winds within the vortex of the fire.
24:44 John Hopkins? Rob glances at a nearby storage hut, then back at the seething firestorm.
24:51 Speaker 02 And I kept thinking in my head, "Boy, I hope this smoke doesn't make it to this storage facility." And sure enough, all of a sudden, that's now engulfed. And it's been this sort of little smoky, little, almost campfire-looking thing just became this huge thing that was all sort of above us and in front of us, and it was getting louder and louder.
25:15 John Hopkins? Their eyes start to water.
25:19 John Hopkins? Raspby, as the fumes fill his lungs, Rob swipes a sweat-soaked hand across his forehead and looks up at the sky. The sun is hidden behind a steel, gray cloud of smoke, transforming day into night. They've had no time to react. It's all happened so fast. But now, they have to move. He turns in the direction of their news van. But there is a problem.
25:46 Speaker 02 We had parked our news van to our right, but it was around a slight bend. Up until this point, without thinking about it, we were just gonna head back to the car and drive off. But there was so much smoke that we couldn't see our car anymore, and we couldn't see even the whole area where our car would be. So that was just out of the question. You could see nothing.
26:10 John Hopkins? Rob and Nick's exit strategy has crumbled.
26:15 John Hopkins? They scan their murky surroundings for other escape routes by foot. It isn't promising.
26:21 Speaker 02 There was no obvious exit from where we were because there was smoke in three directions and then the fourth direction, which was behind us. There was no way because it was just a steep drop. There was just nowhere to go. That wasn't an accessible way to escape.
26:36 John Hopkins? As the facts begin to sink in, the pair turn towards each other, the same realization dawning on both of their faces.
26:46 Speaker 02 There was really no place to go and the smoke that had been above us is now getting closer and we kind of looked at each other and I remember thinking that this can't be happening. I'm supposed to be with my wife at the hospital and what am I doing here? And we really weren't sure what to do. Nick tells me that I took one step in all four directions at the same time.
27:09 John Hopkins? Rob frantically spins around, searching for anything that might offer salvation as the fire continues its merciless march towards them. There is nothing, nowhere to go.
27:21 John Hopkins? The flames are mere feet away now. The moisture in the air has gone, the sun has vanished. The two men are enveloped by dry, scorching blackness.
27:33 John Hopkins? It seems they cannot escape the inescapable.
27:36 Speaker 02 I'm thinking, you know, I'm still supposed to put up this wallpaper in the baby's nursery. We were still in the stage of, there must be some way out of this. We just haven't figured it out yet. But it was getting close and the fact that no one was around, so there was really nowhere to go. My mind was, what do we do? We're not sure what we can do and how sad is this, you know, that I'm here and she's gonna have this baby and... It wasn't paralyzed with fear or oh my god or anything. It was more thinking about this chore that I hadn't finished, you know, the wallpaper and just sadness that my wife is gonna go through this and I might not be able to get out of it.
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29:31 John Hopkins? Rob braces himself as the river of fire spills down the slope towards him and Nick. How long do they have before it reaches them? One minute? Two?
29:42 John Hopkins? But just then, with burning tendrils licking at their feet, the men spot something.
29:49 John Hopkins? Lights cut through the dense, dark smoke. And a second later, something emerges from the gloom.
29:58 Speaker 02 At this point, this fire truck came out of this area where you couldn't see anything. In hindsight, when that fire truck was revealed to us coming out of the smoke, it seemed like the last scene in Casablanca with Bogart coming to the rescue.
30:14 John Hopkins? With red and blue lights refracting through the haze, the truck inches towards Rob and Nick. The cavalry has arrived.
30:24 John Hopkins? Inside the small vehicle are four firefighters, led by Battalion Chief James Riley, a veteran with more than 25 years of experience.
30:33 John Hopkins? Hurriedly, Chief Riley tells them to get on board. They need everyone out of the area as soon as possible.
30:40 John Hopkins? Rob goes to do as he's told. Incredibly, Nick hesitates.
30:46 Speaker 02 Nick at first was reluctant to hop on because he didn't want to leave the car. The photographers are responsible for their equipment and their vehicles and he didn't want to get in trouble and all that, but the firefighters were adamant that we get on.
30:59 John Hopkins? With truly no time left to spare, Rob and Nick clamber up onto the truck.
31:05 John Hopkins? The firefighters gun the engine and they shoot off down the narrow twisting roads, surrounded by smoke and fire. But they haven't escaped yet. Even with experts helping them, navigating their way out of this smoldering labyrinth will not be straightforward. The truck pulls away and Rob looks back at the spot where he and Nick were just standing. Within moments, it is devoured by flames.
31:29 Speaker 02 The fact that minutes later, where we were standing was overrun with fires. So we were just minutes away from real trouble. It was getting hotter and hotter. So, yeah, I think there was a point when, you know, perhaps just the smoke would have just overcome us.
31:45 John Hopkins? As the fire engine speeds through the hills, tearing around hairpin bends, Rob and Nick start to become aware of the sheer extent of the blaze.
31:55 John Hopkins? It has spread with frightening speed, sweeping across the hillside and consuming vegetation and houses alike. It's moved so fast that the emergency responders haven't been able to keep up with it.
32:08 John Hopkins? Now the priority is to clear the area and try to limit casualties.
32:13 Speaker 02 They weren't there to fight the fire. It was too big by then for them to be able to fight. Their mission was to sort of to get to neighborhoods and evacuate people. So I was relieved to be with them, with somebody who knew what they were doing in a situation like this.
32:29 John Hopkins? Rob and Nick watch their smoke choked surroundings speeding past as Chief Riley and his crew race to warn residents to evacuate.
32:38 Speaker 02 They would stop, they would get out, fan out, yelling at people to get out, get out, get out. And people are sort of negotiating, you know, can I go back in and bring out this piece of equipment or some sort of personal item that they had? And they're yelling, no, get out, get out. And so it's sort of this chaos going on.
32:59 John Hopkins? The firefighters move through different neighborhoods, repeating the procedure and trying to get people to safety.
33:06 John Hopkins? But at one point, after Chief Riley gets off the fire engine, he doesn't get back on. Since his personal car is parked somewhere in this area, his crew assume that he's spotted it and gone to move it. Unconcerned, they continue their work of evacuating the area.
33:25 Speaker 02 We got to see different neighborhoods because we were on this vehicle. I had never covered anything that big. And the interesting point of it being a journalist was, usually these fires happen, you hear about them and then you travel. And as a journalist, you're trying to get in or as close to the fire as you can to cover it. In this case, I was inside the fire trying to get out as fast as we could. So that was interesting to see how these fires behave.
33:58 John Hopkins? But there's also an obvious poignancy and tragedy to what they're witnessing.
34:03 John Hopkins? These are neighborhoods Rob knows well, and they're being destroyed before his very eyes.
34:08 Speaker 02 As we're traveling through, I realized I was on the street where a fellow reporter lived, who was married to another photographer at the station. And they had, just the week before, held a baby shower for my wife at that house. And her neighborhood was gone.
34:36 John Hopkins? After reaching a place of relative safety, far enough away from the blaze, Rob and Nick break away from the firefighters and meet up with another news crew from the TV station.
34:47 John Hopkins? They begin live reporting from the scene, the fire still burning all around them.
34:53 John Hopkins? With soot and ash coating Rob's sandy hair, he delivers updates to the frightened people of Oakland and the surrounding area against a background cacophony of roaring flames, wind, and sirens.
35:08 Speaker 02 I remember seeing an ember, the wind blowing an ember, just kind of almost in slow motion, it was floating, almost like a feather, and it landed on the roof of a house, maybe six or seven houses down from where I first saw it. I turned away and maybe five or 10 seconds later, I looked back at this house and it was completely engulfed. And just in a period of 10 or 15 seconds, you know, from an ember landing on a roof, the whole house was, was gone. In this case, because of the winds and just the heat and all of it, it just went in a flash. So that's a very vivid memory that I have of that day.
35:47 John Hopkins? While he's working, Rob suddenly starts to feel off, dizzy, queasy. Nick feels it too. They're suffering the effects of smoke inhalation. Paramedics suggest they should both go to the hospital, that Rob has other plans.
36:04 Speaker 02 I breathed a lot of smoke and didn't feel great, but I mean, I had a lot of adrenaline and I'm in the middle of this big story and I didn't want to go to the hospital.
36:13 John Hopkins? As a compromise, Rob leaves the scene of the fire and returns to the newsroom to continue wall-to-wall coverage of the blaze. It's all anyone can talk about.
36:23 Speaker 02 They were glad to see me because I had this eyewitness perspective on it. And so we just stayed on the air. We had the video that we had shot earlier, so we had a pretty good handle. And then I was in just full journalist mode.
36:37 John Hopkins? Despite the chaos, Rob has to find time to call his wife. It goes to voicemail.
36:45 John Hopkins? Safe in San Francisco and unaware of the extent of the fire, she's gone to get her hair and nails done, anticipating that she won't have any time to do so with a newborn in the coming weeks. Rob leaves her a message, explaining what's happened and what he's been through, but that he's okay. Luckily for everyone, she doesn't go into labor that day.
37:13 John Hopkins? The Diablo winds finally died down that evening, and firefighters continued tackling the blaze throughout the night. Rob eventually leaves the station and returns home around midnight, exhausted and still smelling of smoke. The following morning reveals a grey wasteland of charred ruins. It isn't until Wednesday that the fire is officially declared to be under control. For Rob, the week passes in a blur of reporting and covering the aftermath of the blaze. It's so busy, there's not really any time for him to fully process the experience he's just been through. But one piece of news does hit him hard. The day after he's escaped from the flames,
37:58 John Hopkins? he finds out what happened to Fire Chief James Riley.
38:02 Speaker 02 I talked to one of the other three firefighters that I was with on the phone, and he was the one who told me what had happened, and I just felt awful. He was killed, an overhead power line had come down. He was trying to help a resident, and one of those overhead power lines had snapped off and hit him and killed him and the woman that he was talking to.
38:27 John Hopkins? Chief Riley's funeral takes place on October 28, just over a week later. Rob plans on going to pay his respects to the man who saved his life, but on the day in question, his wife goes into labour. Instead, he writes a letter to Chief Riley's widow.
38:48 Speaker 02 I remember crying and writing this note at the same time. And that was the first time, I think, that the whole adrenaline and the shock and having a baby and all that came crashing down in that moment that I was writing the letter. Up until then, I felt like I was holding up quite well.
39:05 John Hopkins? The past eight days of Rob's life have been extraordinarily eventful, a draining sequence of ups and downs. But the joyous birth of his daughter is a symbol of renewal, the beginning of his attempt to move on and heal after the trauma of the fire.
39:23 Speaker 02 When our daughter was born, where I think most people would go from normal to a high, I was sort of down and got to normal and then the high, you know, thereafter. But at least I was back. I felt like I was finally myself when she was born.
39:47 John Hopkins? The Oakland firestorm was one of the worst in US history. It caused 25 deaths and 150 injuries. It destroyed more than 1,500 acres of land and 3,000 homes, causing over $3 billion worth of damage in today's money.
40:04 Speaker 02 At the time of the fire, this was the second biggest urban fire in US history. Number one was the famous Chicago fire in the early 1900s. And then there was this. So it wasn't like anybody had seen anything like this in generations.
40:21 John Hopkins? No cause is ever found to explain how the fire started that fateful Saturday. Nearly everyone in Oakland and the surrounding region is affected by the blaze in some way.
40:33 John Hopkins? It highlights the vulnerabilities of the area, and various measures are put in place to try to prevent a similar incident recurring in the future, including making hydrant outlets universally accessible to all fire hoses and intensifying vegetation management plans.
40:50 John Hopkins? As for Rob, the Oakland firestorm becomes an important moment in his journalistic career.
40:57 Speaker 02 My reporting at the time, it got a fair amount of attention. I was pleased about that personally, but I didn't want to just be known just for that in my career because I just happened to be in that situation. It was nothing that I did or story that I dug up or anything like that. It was more reactive, I guess. So I tried to put it aside for a long time and just try to go on with my career. I didn't want to be the fire guy. I covered many wildfires after that, but I didn't want that to be my thing.
41:31 John Hopkins? Rob goes on to have a long and varied career as a TV reporter, eventually retiring after 38 years with KTVU.
41:40 John Hopkins? And although the firestorm remains one of the standout stories he covered, more importantly, it will forever be the day he escaped a hideous fate and was instead reunited with his growing family.
41:53 John Hopkins? And every year on his daughter's birthday, Rob says he thinks about the firestorm and James Riley, remembering the four brave men who saved his life.
42:03 Speaker 02 I think about that a lot because without him and his crew, you know, we would not have made it out. So I've always been grateful. It's not really ever really far from where I'm at, even though there was a time when I tried to just put it aside. But now I accept it. I accept that it's just something that happened that I experienced and I'm grateful for the experience. I learned a lot from it, I think.
42:38 John Hopkins? In the next episode, we meet Morgan Segway. In 2019, the former acrobat from northern France is living in the Southeast Asian country of East Timor. One sunny Sunday, he decides to trek to the top of Mount Manukoko, a 3,000-foot jungle-clad peak. After reaching the summit, however, Morgan's thrill-seeking backfires, and soon he finds himself hopelessly, confoundingly lost. Navigating his way back through a dark and otherworldly wilderness, things deteriorate rapidly, culminating in a brutal accident. Grotesquely hurt, with no clear way to reach help, Morgan will accept his fate, until
43:20 John Hopkins? an unexpected arrival appears through the trees and offers a tiny flash of hope. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen right now without waiting and without adverts by joining Noiser Plus.
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