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Just before the Ghost Ship lost power, a makeshift staircase turned into a confused bottleneck. A few people ran up the narrow passageway from the ground floor to flee the flames downstairs, hampering a much larger group trying to crowd-surf down. Not far from the mass, Aaron Marin scanned the second floor of the warehouse. PHOTOS: Artists killed in Ghost Ship Oakland fire “We all just looked at each other and knew we were trapped,” said Marin, 45, one of the last people to escape the Oakland building as it was consumed by flames. With just Christmas lights illuminating the room, he stumbled through thick smoke, clawed his way behind an inflatable projection screen, and jumped from a window to a patch of mud below. Although the warehouse never would have passed a fire safety inspection, Ghost Ship operator Derick Ion Almena had recently refurbished a few windows so they could open and planned to install escape ladders, said Gwen Procknow, Marin’s girlfriend. Almena told Procknow they kept some hoses coiled upstairs and had fire extinguishers around the warehouse. READ MORE: Female DJ among Ghost Ship fire victims But no one besides Marin who knew the layout of the building was on the second floor when the deadly fire broke out during an electronic music party Dec. 2 — not Almena; his wife, Micah Allison; or other residents. Only Marin, who had moved in two weeks earlier, was familiar enough with the Ghost Ship to try to guide people to safety. But smoke, noise, darkness and panic were murderous opponents. As fire investigators with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives work to reconstruct the night of the disaster, when 36 people were killed in the worst structure fire in California since 1906, their interviews with Marin are providing insight into the blaze’s rapid progression and the maze inside the warehouse-turned-art collective. From his home in Portland, Ore., Marin spoke extensively with The Chronicle by phone, detailing his escape from a second-floor window. His recollections also shed light on how the setup of the party that night may have blocked off pathways through the building. The San Francisco native said he is haunted by the last hours before the fire. He wishes now that he had socialized more during the party — it would have been a chance to tell these strangers that in case of an emergency, there was a way out. Marin, who plays bass guitar, said he accepted his old friend Almena’s invitation in mid-November to reconnect with the Bay Area music scene and help the collective set up a recording space. Procknow drove him from Portland to the collective on 31st Avenue near International Boulevard and remembered voicing her concerns about the lack of fire safety measures. “There were extension cords and plug-ins everywhere,” Procknow said, describing the space as “full of stuff.” She asked Allison about the emergency escape plan and what they would do in case of a fire. Procknow found out that a few hoses were coiled upstairs and that Almena had just reconstructed a few windows that were previously closed solidly so they could open. Almena’s family planned to use escape ladders in case of a fire, Procknow learned. As they walked through the warehouse, Marin told his girlfriend he wanted to set up a living space for himself in a back room. It had no windows and was nowhere near an exit. “I was like, ‘No, it’s a dead end,’” Procknow said. “I was like, ‘Babe, if there was ever a fire and you were here, you’d never get out.’” Marin ended up staying in a loft area above the second floor, and Procknow returned to Portland. By Dec. 2, Marin said, he and other residents had gotten the place in “immaculate” condition, compared with the shape it was in two weeks before. But Marin said he didn’t know about the Dec. 2 concert until that afternoon, and when he found out, he felt an “immediate bad vibe.” He texted his friends with his unease. “I didn’t think the place was safe for people,” he said. “It wasn’t ready for any events or concerts.” Almena, who has been unavailable for interviews, told NBC News shortly after the fire that he and his family checked into a hotel that night so they could get some sleep. The people setting up the music show put bicycles and piano benches in front of paths leading to living quarters downstairs, Marin said. On the second floor, a giant blow-up projection screen was positioned squarely in front of a kitchen area, and a big crate was placed next to it. Downstairs was the usual disarray: about four pathways through the furniture and art, five or six dead ends, a camper, and numerous rooms and nooks, Marin said. Marin said he wandered around long enough to watch a woman paint a band member’s nails before he retreated from the dance-floor area and into the recording studio. For most of the party, Marin said, he was by himself playing acoustic music. Sometime after 11 p.m., the smell of burning rubber got him out of the studio and halfway down a staircase in the back of the warehouse that led to living spaces. On a landing of the staircase he ran into a Ghost Ship resident, Bob Mule, who thought there was a fire downstairs but wanted to come back to collect a few art pieces. They briefly investigated a lightbulb they remembered had been going on and off, thinking it might have something to do with the fire, before they parted ways, with Mule going down the stairs and Marin back up the way he came. On the second floor, Marin encountered a bizarre scene. The DJ’s turntables were on fire, and a band member was staring straight at the flames. Thinking he could put them out, Marin asked around for water. Someone running by handed him a bottle. But as light smoke wafted into the room from every direction, Marin realized the flames weren’t coming from the turntables but were crawling up from the first floor. ATF investigators have said the fire started downstairs at the back of the building. There were no sprinklers or alarms. Smoke overwhelmed nearly everyone upstairs before they had a chance to get out, investigators said. “There was rapid fire progression,” said ATF Special Agent Jill Snyder. “Initial witness interviews have indicated that the fire was well developed by the time the second-floor occupants realized that a fire was going on on the first floor.” Turning his eyes away from the turntables, Marin looked to the makeshift staircase that party guests had walked up single file earlier to get to the dance floor. “There’s so many people trying to barrel down that one-person stairwell,” he said. “People were screaming, panicking, kind of trying to get back up. One of them yelled, ‘Not good!’” Within seconds, the smoke turned thick and black as the shouts and frantic pushing at the stairwell continued, Marin said. “I just saw all those kids,” he said. “There was so much chaos and they were all so focused on those stairs. They didn’t know what else to do.” As the second floor went dark, Marin looked up to the ceiling shaft, thinking he could get out through the roof if only a ladder were nearby. Then a single thought took over: There was a window in the kitchen on the second floor — people wouldn’t have to negotiate the staircase. He let out a few screams, “Kitchen! Kitchen! Window!” as he pushed his way behind the “stupid giant ice cube” of a projection screen. The people closest to him didn’t know what he was doing, and the crowd farther away couldn’t see or hear him over the din and smoke. Someone brushed against him, and Marin tried grabbing the person, but whoever it was pulled away. When he got to the kitchen window and flung it open, people below in a storage lot remembered seeing smoke shoot into the air. Marin screamed for a ladder and shouted, “People are dying in here!” “I was two or three breaths away from hitting that last breath before I got to the window,” he said. With no ladder in sight, he threw one leg over the ledge, then the other. Hanging by his hands, he searched for a foothold and felt nothing but smooth wall. As his hands started burning, he dropped, landing on his knees and arms in the mud. He wasn’t injured. “I was looking up, ready to catch anyone, and no one else came,” Marin said. “No one else ever got through the window.” In the days after the fire, Marin said he couldn’t stop coughing up black gunk. He went back to the scene once with ATF investigators to do a walk-through as they pieced together where things were and how the night unfolded. “I couldn’t recognize the place,” Marin said. “You can’t recognize something when it’s gone.” Marin said he still can’t shake the replays of those last moments inside the Ghost Ship and the collective terror on people’s faces when they realized they weren’t going to get out. “I feel like I should’ve just died,” he said. “When I close my eyes, that feeling ... there’s no words to describe everyone’s last fear. You’re just thinking, ‘This is it.’”