Oakland Warehouse Fire: Despite Warning Signs, City Failed To Intervene

In Oakland, Ca., officials are trying determine the cause of a fire that killed 36 people attending a dance party in a warehouse. A litany of governmental and bureaucratic failures is emerging.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

A week after a warehouse fire killed 36 people in Oakland, neighbors have been raising questions about whether the fire could have been prevented. As KQED's Alex Emslie reports, residents say that warning signs about the building were not thoroughly investigated.

ALEX EMSLIE, BYLINE: Ben Acevedo began living in a house across the street from the Ghost Ship in late 2013.

BEN ACEVEDO: When we moved in, we saw there's kind of some funky things happening over there - and funky in a good way.

EMSLIE: Acevedo was a musician and went over to check it out.

ACEVEDO: It became immediately apparent that that was not the case - that they weren't cool artists or doing funky art.

EMSLIE: In short, Acevedo says, it was already cluttered and dangerous. And that was three years ago, when the unpermitted collective was just getting started. Soon there was noise at all hours of the night and large piles of trash strewn about the sidewalk. Acevedo says he asked his neighbors to turn it down and clean it up. But they didn't. So he started calling police and calling and calling until he moved out in mid-2015.

ACEVEDO: Probably a good, like, 50 or 60 times over the two and half years.

EMSLIE: Every once in a while, police would respond several hours later, after the party was over. So there wasn't much they could do, Acevedo says. Nevertheless, officers urged him to keep reporting. He wasn't the only one calling authorities about the property. Shelley Mack says she's a former resident of the Ghost Ship and called police three times because she was concerned about what was happening there.

SHELLEY MACK: You know what? If you had crime reports, it would be a book - it would this high - of all the police's incidents here that they will not release. Ask them to release the police reports.

EMSLIE: We did - as well as all calls for service. We're still waiting for the police to respond. There are also documented recent and not-so-recent complaints of blight and a legal residency at the Ghost Ship to Oakland's planning and building department. It appears the city followed up. But the inspector wrote he couldn't get in. The building's owner has said she didn't know people were living in the warehouse. Mack says that was the residents' intention.

MACK: They worked really had to make sure the owner doesn't know. But she could've went in there. She saw all the wood - no sprinklers, no alarms.

EMSLIE: Former neighbor Acevedo doesn't buy it, though.

ACEVEDO: That's preposterous. There was, like, 20 people living there for the last, like, three years. There's no way that you can not know that.

EMSLIE: City-complaint records indicate the property owner addressed blight concerns at the lot next to the Ghost Ship property in 2014. But no inspectors appear to have entered the building. That's true going back decades. Also, in 2014, a civil grand jury found the Oakland Fire Department only inspects about two-thirds of commercial buildings each year, despite a city program that aims to inspect them all. What's more, the Ghost Ship warehouse isn't on a city database going back 10 years, indicating the building had no fire inspections since at least 2006. Again, Ben Acevedo.

ACEVEDO: The warning signs were there. And it just - it destroys me. It really does.

EMSLIE: The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is leading the investigation into what caused the deadly fire. And Oakland's mayor has pledged to improve inspections and safety protocols at warehouses throughout the city. For NPR News, I'm Alex Emslie in San Francisco.

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