Two years before the Ghost Ship exploded in flames on Dec. 2, claiming the lives of 36 people, Oakland police were well aware of what was happening in the warehouse. They were alerted to illegal occupants there and visited the property and its neighboring buildings dozens of times in response to allegations of dangerous activities: drug sales, fights, stabbings, thefts, and alleged rape.
The revelations were made public Wednesday in more than 600 pages of city records requested by numerous media outlets. The documents detailed visits by police officers, firefighters, building inspectors and public works staffers to the warehouse and its surrounding properties. The documents paint the clearest picture yet of the safety hazards city officials knew existed on the premises before the inferno, one of the deadliest structural fires in recent U.S. history.
And it should have been no surprise to police that illegal party activity was happening inside the collective of artist studios. On one occasion, long before the Dec. 2 synth-pop concert that went horribly wrong, police responded to an unruly, illegal “rave,” city records show. None of these reports, nor the more than 10 code enforcement complaints filed about the location, prompted city officials to take action against the converted warehouse.
None of the documents describe any actions taken to shut down the building, or even a formal inspection of the premises to ensure it was safe and up to code. Since 2004, the warehouse and an adjacent vacant lot have been the subject of 10 code enforcement complaints and 39 code enforcement inspections, including for illegal residential use, parking and homeless camping on a vacant lot, constructing a house without a permit, and rampant trash and rodent issues.
Despite previous claims from officials that they had no idea the building was used as a residence, police reports that at least once, a tenant told officers the warehouse was used for illegal shared housing. Neighbors and residents complained about chronic loud music, and on March 1, 2015, about an illegal “rave” involving drug and alcohol sales.
The 911 caller said there were “15 people barricaded” inside the warehouse, what police called a “24-hour art studio,” located on 31st Avenue, a short block off International Boulevard, one of the main thoroughfares of East Oakland. The caller also reported hearing what sounded like a Taser and threatening remarks.
Officers contacted the building’s owner, who agreed to let people leave, according to the police report. Officers “stood by and preserved the peace as people left the scene.” It was unclear in the report whether the “owner” was the building’s main tenant, Derick Ion Almena or the building’s actual owner, Chor Ng. After the party was shut down, other officers responded to a complaint from a caller that “there were several subjects inside his warehouse refusing to leave.”
An officer noted that the facility seemed to fit the city’s definition of a licensed cabaret, or “any place where the general public is admitted, for a fee, entertainment is provided, and alcohol is served.” Despite the warehouse not being licensed as a cabaret, the officers did not make any arrests or issue any citations.
On that night in Dec. 2, more than 50 people – many of them in their 20s and 30s – had gathered on the second floor of the warehouse for a concert and dance party. The blaze spread quickly through the cluttered warehouse, which was described by residents as a death trap littered with electrical cords and driftwood and equipped with few exists. Yet many depicted the Ghost Ship as a refuge for struggling artists alienated by the Bay Area’s ever-rising housing prices and as a sanctuary for members of the queer community.
Oakland fire officials have yet to announce the cause of the blaze, and the Alameda County district attorney has launched a criminal investigation.
The leader of the Ghost Ship artist collective, Almena, has come under intense scrutiny in the aftermath of the fire. But his defense team, led by a prominent San Francisco lawyer, released a report recently claiming the fire did not start inside the Ghost Ship warehouse – but rather in an adjacent building. Almena’s attorneys said their findings could rule out the possibility of criminal negligence charges against their client.
Almena and his wife leased the building in 2013, after which they turned it into an art gallery and concert venue, even though no business was registered there. They charged as many as 20 residents – including many artists – to live there for about $565 a month, even though the building was not permitted for residential use or special events.
An inspector was sent to the Ghost Ship just two weeks before the fire to investigate alleged illegal construction and residential use inside the property, records show. However, the inspector had been unable to go inside the chain-link fenced-building, and wrote that the alleged illegal structure was not visible from the sidewalk.
Meanwhile, the building’s owner was cited for garbage that had been piling up on the property, including some hazardous trash. “The yard became a trash collection site,” city records stated.
City Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed, who is on leave from her job for an unspecified reason, said in December that she had not been alerted to serious complaints there by other agencies, including the police, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Although fire inspectors had visited the surrounding properties 16 times since 1999, most recently in 2016, fire officials said they did not inspect the warehouse itself because city records indicated it was unoccupied, and they were not told by police or anyone else what was really going on, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
City Councilman Noel Gallo, who represents Fruitvale, the neighborhood where Ghost Ship was located, told the Chronicle this “clearly demonstrates the lack of cooperation from department to department.”
Erica Terry Derryck, a spokeswoman for Mayor Libby Schaaf, said Wednesday that city police officers “are not trained to be building inspectors.” Police officials did not respond to requests from the Chronicle for comment on the new documents.
Attorney Mary Alexander is representing the families of seven victims in lawsuits against Ng, Almena and others connected to the property. She said the records are going to “show the city knew what was going on in this warehouse and they failed to take any action to red-tag, close it down or help the people living there or coming to events,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
“They allowed a place to exist that had no fire alarms, smoke detectors or good way to get out,” Alexander added. “It was a death trap.”
(c) 2017, The Washington Post
