Tenants describe conditions inside site of deadly fire

This 2014 photo provided by Ajesh Shah shows the interior of a portion of the 'Ghost Ship' warehouse, taken while he was on a tour as a potential tenant of the Oakland, Calif., building. Dozens of people have died at a party after a fire that started late Friday, Dec. 2, 2016, and swept through the building. (Ajesh Shah via AP) less This 2014 photo provided by Ajesh Shah shows the interior of a portion of the 'Ghost Ship' warehouse, taken while he was on a tour as a potential tenant of the Oakland, Calif., building. Dozens of people have ... more Photo: Ajesh Shah, Associated Press Photo: Ajesh Shah, Associated Press Image 1 of / 80 Caption Close Tenants describe conditions inside site of deadly fire 1 / 80 Back to Gallery

Propane tanks used to heat an improvised shower. Exposed electrical wires covering a back staircase, rendering it unusable. An ever-changing cast of guests and residents who paid between $500 and $1,500 a month for spaces that were made livable with jerry-rigged generators, hot plates and space heaters.

Any one of these things could have sparked a fire that killed at least 36 people in an old warehouse that was not zoned or built for residential use. A criminal investigation opened by the Alameda County district attorney’s office will look at everything that went on under the roof at the building at 31st Avenue and International Boulevard in Oakland to get to the bottom of the deadly inferno.

“A transformer blew and caught on fire a week after I’d been there,” said a former resident of the Ghost Ship warehouse, Shelley Mack. “We had no electricity, so they were using generators and illegally hooking up” to Pacific Gas and Electric Co. power sources.

As the number of dead continued to grow on Sunday, so did the questions about the Ghost Ship, the Fruitvale neighborhood conundrum that some described as a mecca for creativity and others saw as a chaotic firetrap run by a man who felt he was above the law and immune from the dangers so obvious to many visitors.

On Sunday, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley assigned a team of investigators to begin looking into the fire.

“The district attorney’s office has activated our criminal investigation team and the arson task force, which is led by our office, and we are working with the local law enforcement effort conducting the criminal investigation into this tragedy,” said Teresa Drenick, spokeswoman for the office.

Drenick would not comment on the target of the investigation.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf also said city officials, with help from the state Office of Emergency Services, would create a “comprehensive record” of every interaction the city had with the warehouse.

The city’s investigation will focus in part on why the building owner, Chor Ng, and primary tenant, Derick Ion Almena, were able to continue to operate the property despite many complaints about code violations. The warehouse was not zoned for residential use, and all the work in the structure had been done without permits, officials said.

City Councilman Noel Gallo, whose district includes the warehouse, said the Ghost Ship had been on his radar for several years, and that it had been a running concern for officials. The city received complaints of blight and construction being done without permits at the building on Nov. 13 and sent an inspector to check out the premises on Nov. 17, but the inspector could not get inside.

Gallo said he has pressed officials to explain why they never returned to the building after failing to carry out an inspection.

“That's a good question, and I asked it too,” Gallo said. “There's no real explanation why we could not get a response.”

Schaaf also said she didn’t know why inspectors had failed to go back to the building and try again to look inside.

Residents said they were asked to hide evidence of their living there when the landlord came by. They would stash pillows and bedding and erect a piece of plywood to block a hole in the wall that had been punched through in order to tap into the electricity of the adjacent space.

“I saw wires sparking all the time,” Mack said. “There were all kinds of extension cords stuck together. You could always smell something burning. “There was always some electrical issue — something blowing, something sparking, something burning. Always.”

Mack said she paid $700 a month in rent, but that some people paid as much as $1,500.

People who know Almena said he was an alluring and fascinating character who could also be vulgar and abrasive, and who ultimately alienated everyone who came into his orbit.

Court records show that in 2015, Almena was the target of two restraining orders filed by different people, and he himself filed a restraining order against a third person. He also pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property and was sentenced to 36 months’ probation. Details of the cases were not immediately available.

Mariah Benavides, who worked as a nanny for Almena and his wife, Micah Allison, from 2012 to 2013, described them as “somewhat organized hoarders.”

At the time, Almena and Allison lived in a house off Seminary Avenue in East Oakland and earned money throwing parties at various locations, Benavides said.

Benavides said she was only 16 when she worked for Almena and Allison, but the couple would leave their three children with her for up to five days at a time.

“I would stay the night, cook for the kids, bathe them and send them to school,” Benavides said. As time wore on the couple stopped paying her, she said, and she quit shortly before they moved into the warehouse in late 2013.

When Almena and Allison first moved into what later became the Satya Yuga artist collective, the place had no plumbing, running water or electricity, said Benavides, who stayed in touch with the family and came to visit the following year.

The building was much more cluttered and chaotic than the couple’s former East Oakland house, she said. Roughly 10 tenants lived in stacked RVs and makeshift rooms on the bottom floor, which had no visible windows, she said. Almena and Allison lived upstairs. An improvised staircase made of wooden pallets led up to the second floor, where the couple lived with their children.

The police were there every week, Mack said.

“There was trash everywhere. I had a gun pulled on me,” she said. “They suck you in, then if you argue with them, they kick you out and keep your stuff.”

The children showered at the home of a neighbor who would occasionally feed them, Benavides said.

“They were living off of dollar cheeseburgers and tacos,” she said.

The couple were unavailable for comment.

Other people familiar with the warehouse posted photos on social media of exposed wires dangling from the ceiling and candles strewn throughout the odd menagerie of objects and furniture.

Almena “built partitions out of pallets standing on edge that he nailed shingles into,” said Matt Hummel, a longtime member of Oakland’s gallery scene who now heads the city’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission. “So when you looked at it you saw this beautiful shingled thing, but it’s literally kindling. And the whole place was built out like that.”

Nikki Keiber and Carmen Brito, who lived at the warehouse, said they were both in the building at the time of the fire, but were not attending the party. Keiber had been cleaning her space and reorganizing her tools when she stopped to send a text at 11:18 p.m. Friday. A minute later, she said, someone yelled, “Fire!”

She grabbed the fire extinguisher out of her RV kitchen, opened her gate and looked down the hall.

“I saw 20-foot flames,” Keiber said. Trying to fight the blaze with her extinguisher, she said, was “like using a squirt gun to put out a fire.”

Brito said she had planned to go to the party but fell asleep. “I woke up around 11 and my room was filled with smoke, like a fog of smoke,” she said. “People were running and grabbing fire extinguishers and trying to put the flames out.”

Despite the building’s shortcomings, Brito said, she liked living there. And in the Bay Area housing market, she said, she doesn’t have too many choices.

“It’s hard — people don’t realize how hard it is to try and find somewhere else to live,” Brito said. “If you make $100 a day, you’re competing with tech workers who are making $100 an hour.

“How do you compete for housing?” she added. “I’ve watched people get pushed further and further out. I got forced out of San Francisco years ago. No one wants to talk about these larger issues, of the thousands of people living in tents.”

Chronicle staff writers Vivian Ho and Sarah Ravani contributed to this report.

Rachel Swan, Evan Sernoffsky and J.K. Dineen are San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com, esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan @EvanSernoffsky and @SFJKdineen