Ghost Ship warehouse fire
On December 2, 2016, at about 11:20 p.m. PST, a fire started in a former warehouse that had been unlawfully converted into an artist collective with living spaces in Oakland, California, which was hosting a concert with 80–100 attendees. The building, located in the Fruitvale neighborhood, was zoned for only industrial purposes; residential and entertainment uses were prohibited. The blaze killed 36 people, making it the deadliest fire in the history of Oakland. It was also the deadliest building fire in the United States since The Station nightclub fire in 2003, the deadliest in California since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the deadliest mass-casualty event in Oakland since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
Master tenant Derick Almena lived on the premises with his wife and three children, and sub-let the first floor to about 20 other residents who were instructed to not divulge that they lived there. In Almena's lease for the building, he did not say that it would be used as a residence, and on two occasions he told police that nobody lived in the building. The Alameda County district attorney's office launched an investigation into the fire's causes, and in 2017 charged Almena and his assistant Max Harris with felony involuntary manslaughter. In 2018, both pleaded no contest to 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter in a plea bargain with prosecutors, but the judge overseeing the case discarded the plea deals and the men were tried in court, facing as many as 36 years in prison.
On September 4, 2019, the jury deadlocked 10–2 for conviction on the 36 counts of manslaughter against Almena, resulting in a mistrial, while Harris was acquitted on all 36 counts. In 2021, Almena pled guilty to the 36 counts and was sentenced to 12 years in prison and released for time served.
In July 2020, the city of Oakland settled a civil lawsuit for the victims and agreed to pay $33 million: $9 million to one person who survived with lifelong injuries and $24 million to the families of the 36 who were killed in the fire. In August 2020, Pacific Gas and Electric Company settled a civil lawsuit for 32 of the victims for an undisclosed amount.
Background
Building
The cement-block warehouse was constructed in 1930. The property was purchased in 1988 by Chor Ng, who is linked to 17 other properties in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ng also owned a body shop, cell phone store and other businesses nearby. The autobody shop and the cell-phone store shared their electrical supply with the Ghost Ship. One former resident reported that the building's electrical system was entirely dependent on extension cords, and she was so concerned about safety that she would sleep in her car.Ownership and management
Ng leased the property to Derick Almena and Nicholas Bouchard in 2013. They stated in the lease agreement that the property would be used as an artist collective "to build and create theatrical sets and offer workshops for community outreach." Almena named the building the Ghost Ship. He lived on the second floor with his wife and three children. He illegally sublet space on the first floor, charging about 25 resident artists rent ranging between $300 and $600 per month. The monthly rate for a one-bedroom apartment in Oakland at the time typically exceeded $2,000.Almena instructed resident members of the collective, informally called Satya Yuga, to tell others that the warehouse was a 24-hour art studio and to not divulge that they lived there. In 2014 or 2015, Almena told police that no one lived in the building, and he repeated the same statement several months before the fire. A former tenant claimed that Almena used the tenants' rent to cover the warehouse rent and used proceeds from the parties to pay his living expenses.
Makeshift spaces
Use of the warehouse building for housing and entertainment was illegal. Living spaces on the first floor were connected by makeshift hallways constructed of "aggregates of salvaged and scavenged materials, such as pianos, organs, windows, wood benches, lumber, and innumerable other items stacked next to and on top of each other." The live-work spaces were separated by objects such as "wooden studs, steel beams, doors, window frames, bed frames, railings, pianos, benches, chairs, intact motorhomes and trailers, portions of trailers, corrugated metal sheeting, tapestries, plywood, sculptures, tree stumps and tree limbs."Almena said that he and his family slept in the warehouse. Residents and others verified that the family lived on the second floor and that Almena rented space to as many as 18 others who lived in recreational vehicles and makeshift rooms on the first floor. One longtime resident of the warehouse described the building as "a whole maze to get through," filled with wooden objects. He moved away because it was "too sketchy to continue to stay there." One victim of the fire was a building resident.
Known problems
The city had received 10 complaints about the property since 1998, including formal complaints about hazardous garbage and construction debris around the building. The Oakland Planning and Building Department opened an investigation on November 13, 2016 based on a complaint about "blight" and "illegal interior construction." City building inspectors visited the warehouse on November 17, confirming the report of blight, but when no one answered the door, were unable to enter to investigate the report of illegal construction.Inspectors are required to obtain permission from owners to gain entry; when permission is not granted, they must obtain a court order. A spokesperson for the Planning and Building Department stated that promoters of events such as the December 2 concert are required to obtain a special permit, but none had been issued. The city of Oakland's planning director revealed that the building had not been inspected for three decades.
Although police and fire officials warned that the warehouse was a fire hazard, Almena was reported to have ignored these concerns. The vice president of the local firefighters' union said that the fire marshal's office had been understaffed for years and felt that a proper fire inspection "would have shut the place down." On December 13, the Oakland fire chief said that "there were no indications this was an active business," that there were no department records of complaints about the building and that the department "inspects businesses, not buildings."
Electrical problems
Max Ohr, creative director of the artist collective, claimed that the collective had reported electrical problems to Almena. The Mercury News reported that Almena had complained in early 2015 to the building owner's son Kai Ng that electricity in the building used "ancient and violated lines of distribution" that were "in dire need of a total and immediate upgrade". Ng's email reply argued that the "lack of electrical infrastructure" was clearly communicated to Almena when the lease was signed.Following a 2014 small fire in the autobody shop, entrepreneur Ben Cannon reported to Ng that the fire was caused by a "catastrophically overloading" power system and replaced a burnt transformer with a cheaper one. In an email Cannon told Ng that "we are going to use it a little bit differently than standard." In response to a 2018 civil suit brought against the Ngs by the victims' families, the Ngs denied being "negligent or careless" and blamed Cannon for the Ghost Ship fire, claiming that he had misrepresented himself as a licensed electrician. When Cannon was asked in a deposition whether or not he had been present in the warehouse and if he had a contractor's license to perform the work, he refused to answer.
An attorney representing victims' families stated: "They were on notice that there problems with the electricity."
Fire
On the night of December 2, Harris hosted an electronic-music concert featuring performers from house music record label 100% Silk and other independent musicians. Between 80 and 100 people attended the event. Almena's wife and daughters stayed at a hotel so that the girls could sleep.Several residents attempted to extinguish the initial fire using fire extinguishers before waves of fire exploded across the ceiling, igniting everything that they touched. Nearly all of the residents not attending the concert were able to escape in time, and one attested that only five seconds after he saw fire, the building "exploded into an inferno" with smoke so intense that he and three others could only yell "Fire!" before escaping.
The fire spread extremely quickly and generated heavy, deadly smoke. Several factors prevented visitors on the second floor from learning of the fire and impeded their escape. Most importantly, there were no fire alarms, fire sprinklers or smoke alarms in the building. Once the fire was detected, the stairwells and their position relative to exits, the makeshift construction and the huge fuel load created by the furnishings created conditions in which the occupants had very little time to escape.
There were two stairways, one in the back and an improvised one near the front. The rear stairway was concealed behind the stage and furnishings. The front stairway was made from a pile of stacked wooden pallets that several people on the second floor used in order to escape. They crawled along the floor to avoid the dense smoke filling the building, and once on the first floor, they struggled to find the front door because of the complicated layout and the many obstacles blocking the passages.
The building was cluttered with wooden furniture, pianos, art and mannequins. Wooden doors and pallets were used to separate the many small living spaces. Oakland Fire Department chief Teresa Deloach Reed told reporters: "It was like a maze almost."
The first firefighters from Engine 13, stationed within two blocks of the Ghost Ship, reached the warehouse at 11:27 p.m., less than three minutes after the first 9-1-1 call. Their only access was a single-person door that had been cut through a commercial steel rollup door. One company pushed inside on their hands and knees, trying to stay under the smoke, with about 50 feet of hose. The smoke conditions offered almost no visibility and the firemen frequently collided with unseen obstacles. They could only advance in a zig-zag pattern about 20 feet into the building. Another company entered but they too could only advance about 25 feet.
Chief James Bowron learned that as many as 60 people might still be inside, but given the intensity of the fire and smoke, he believed that no survivors would be found during the firemen's initial entry into the building. Concerned about the spread of fire to nearby buildings, Bowron called a second alarm at 11:31 and a third alarm seven minutes after that.
The pallet stairway was initially reported as the building's only stairs, but once the pallet stairs caught fire, they were instantly incinerated. Any people on the second floor who may have still been alive could not reach the ground. No firefighter ever located the pallet staircase, although neither stairway actually led directly to one of the two exits.
About 22 minutes after the firefighters' arrival, the fire suddenly illuminated the night sky with four companies of firefighters inside. When the firemen told Bowron that the second floor was almost completely engulfed in flames, he feared for their safety and ordered them to withdraw. They fought a "surround and drown" exterior defensive operation from that point forward. Seven minutes later, the fire began "blowtorching" out the roof.
Most of the second floor collapsed soon afterward, and later the wood-clad steel-beam roof collapsed as well. It took 52 firefighters using 14 pieces of apparatus until 4:36 a.m. to declare the fire under control. The firefighters who had been on scene all night were upset they had not rescued a single person and that many had likely died.