Oakland fire chief, criticized after Ghost Ship blaze, goes on leave

Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed pauses while speaking during a press conference regarding the status of the investigation of the fire that killed 36 at the Ghost Ship in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016. less Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed pauses while speaking during a press conference regarding the status of the investigation of the fire that killed 36 at the Ghost Ship in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. ... more Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Oakland fire chief, criticized after Ghost Ship blaze, goes on leave 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed — criticized for the Fire Department’s failure to inspect the Ghost Ship and thousands of other commercial buildings before the deadly blaze at the converted artists’ warehouse — has gone on leave.

“We haven’t seen her in over three weeks, and don’t know where she is or what’s going on,” said Zac Unger, vice president of the Oakland firefighters union, which has made no secret of its desire to see Deloach Reed replaced.

On Tuesday, a staffer answering the phone in the chief’s office told us she was on leave and referred us to her acting replacement, Deputy Chief Darin White. He did not return our call.

In the meantime, City Administrator Sabrina Landreth has been spotted running daily meetings at the Fire Department. Landreth already has plenty on her plate, having been in charge of the Police Department since that agency underwent a management upheaval in June. New Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick is expected to be on the job by the end of the month.

City Council President Larry Reid told us Tuesday that he had “no idea” where Deloach Reed was.

“I plan to ask the city administrator about that myself,” he said. “I guess she needed a break. She deserves a vacation like anyone.”

Mayor Libby Schaaf’s spokeswoman, Erica Terry Derryck, gave us the same answer we got from the city administrator’s office when we called about the fire chief: “The city does not comment on the leave status of employees.”

Reed, a former top deputy at the San Jose Fire Department, faced some tough sledding over her management after taking over the Oakland department in 2012. Many more questions were raised after the Ghost Ship fire Dec. 2 killed 36 people.

The one-time warehouse had been operating as a live-work space for artists and others for several years, without city permits, officials said. People who had been inside described it as a cluttered maze with jury-rigged electrical wiring.

Several days after the fire, Deloach Reed said the Fire Department had been unaware of what was going on at the Ghost Ship, which was two blocks from a fire station. Firefighters told us the department’s inspection bureau was chronically understaffed, and an Alameda County civil grand jury took the department to task in 2014, saying it wasn’t checking thousands of commercial buildings for fire safety violations.

After the fire, Schaaf called for a review of the city’s guidelines for inspecting warehouses and other properties like the Ghost Ship where people may be living illegally — or holding events without permits, such as the music show that was under way when the fire broke out. City and federal investigators have not determined what caused the blaze.

Tensions between the chief and the community boiled over last month when Deloach Reed met with an Oakland hills citizens advisory group, where one member pressed her about a lack of inspections designed to prevent wildfires.

The East Bay Times reported that the chief went on a 10-minute diatribe in which she said the group was making her a scapegoat for its own problems and threatened to sue one homeowner who read a lengthy critique of her.

“That... is full of a bunch of lies,” Deloach Reed was quoted as saying. “I’m going to be talking to my attorney about this.”

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