Oakland Tragedy

[BoSoxGal]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/us ... oogle.com/

Watching coverage now, they're saying up to 40 dead. Law enforcement is giving a pressie and don't seem to know much yet.

eta: Please let it have been just a regular awful tragedy and not an intentional act.


Facebook page of the party at the warehouse: https://m.facebook.com/events/594396784086012/

[RayThom]

Some photos of the scene:
http://abc7news.com/news/photos-at-leas ... e/1637939/

[Lord Jim]

Absolutely horrific...

I've seen a lot about it on the local news coverage...

Apparently a building with a lot of art studios...

Oakland has lost some of its best....

[dales]

I believe people were living there as well.

Overturned space heater?

[Gob]

Nasty, thoughts and condolences to all involved.

[dales]

Oakland warehouse fire: Inspectors launched probe last month into building but couldn’t get inside

OAKLAND — City building inspectors last month had launched an investigation into the site of Friday night’s deadly fire for illegal structures built inside the warehouse, but they were unable to get inside the building to inspect it.

Officials had cited the building’s owner for blight on Nov. 13 after neighbors complained of “a ton of garbage piling up” in the adjoining lot. They next day, city records show, officials followed what was called a housing habitability complaint and began an investigation of an alleged “illegal interior building structure.”

When inspectors returned on Nov. 17, they couldn’t get inside, Darin Ranelletti, Oakland’s interim director of planning and building, said at a news conference this afternoon. He didn’t say why or explain whether they had tried later to return.

An art collective called “Ghost Ship” was occupying the building in the 1300 block of 31st Ave., which property records show is owned by Chor N. Ng of Oakland. The two-story building is zoned for a warehouse, but witnesses said it had become an unpermitted art studio and living space — a recurring problem in the Bay Area’s white-hot housing market.

The building had no sprinklers or fire alarms, a few fire extinguishers and only two known exits. The roof of the building collapsed trapping dozens in a horrific inferno during a rave party when the blaze raged into a three-alarm fire about 11:30 p.m. Friday. At least nine people were confirmed dead as of Saturday with more than 25 people unaccounted for.

Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloche-Reed said firefighters had trouble battling the blaze because the space “was filled end-to-end with furniture, what-not, collections … it was like a maze almost.”

Photographs on social media show what was a mezzanine that ran more than half of the building’s length, a finished space with a large rug, lamps, couches, a piano, speakers and art work.

City building inspectors wrote in online records Saturday that “some of the victims might have been trapped in the blaze when they couldn’t escape down a makeshift, one-way stairwell leading to the second floor that was built out of wooden pallets.”

Matt Hummel, who occasionally visited the warehouse, called the way up to the mezzanine “a pirate ship claptrap” that was “a really scary way to get up and down. It was like climbing a fort.”

There was a little known staircase behind an area of the mezzanine used as a musical stage, said Hummel, 46. It was unknown Saturday if anyone tried to escape the fire using those stairs.

Hummel said the place had “an opium den bordello vibe” and that the first floor was full of improvised wooden structures where people lived.

Another man who said he lived at the warehouse for a few months said it was strewn with electrical wires that sometimes sparked. The interior often smelled like burning wires and wood. There were numerous wooden living spaces, and even camping trailers inside.

“The whole place was wires and cables and wood, said DeL Lee, 34.

The person who he said rented the warehouse, Derick Alemany, “had a fetish for wood.” The place was filled with wood signs and shingles, he said.

City inspectors went to the property on Nov. 13 after a complaint of a large amount of garbage dumped outside. A neighbor complained about “a ton of garbage piling up” in vacant lot next to the building, calling it a “trash collection site” and a “trash recycling site.” The building had been “remodeled for residential,” the complaint states.

An inspection of that complaint prompted another investigation about the illegal structure inside, records show. Ranelletti, the city building director, said the warehouse was not permitted for residents.

“We have reports that people were living in the structure,” Ranelletti said Saturday, “but again we are trying to confirm that.”

Ng, according to property records, bought the warehouse in 1997. She could not be reached Saturday afternoon.

Records show Ng owns 11 other Oakland properties, including an art gallery and retail building on International Boulevard, and at least two in San Francisco. A tenant at one of the Oakland properties would only describe her as a nice woman.

[liberty]

Foolish safety nerds worry about things before they happen. No need to worry about things before they happen. Nothing is going to happen, until they do.

[dales]

Death toll rises to 24.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/I ... 690431.php

[dales]

Death toll updated to 33 in deadly warehouse fire3:13 PM[PST]

[dales]

36 dead, largest death tool from a fire since the 1906 earthquake and later fire.

More people killed than in the infamous Oakland Hills fire in 1991

[Guinevere]

Just found out that a colleague's son is among the dead. He broke his ankle trying to get out, and his friend he to leave him behind.

So so sad.

[Bicycle Bill]

36 dead, largest death tool from a fire since the 1906 earthquake and later fire.

More people killed than in the infamous Oakland Hills fire in 1991

I think you mean the largest death toll in the Bay area since the earthquake and fire.  There have been several fire-related tragedies resulting in a large loss of life, such as the Coconut Grove fire in Boston in 1942 which resulted in almost five hundred fatalities as well as the Station Nightclub fire in Rhode Island back in 2003 in which 100 people lost their lives.

-"BB"-

[dales]

I meant CALIFORNIA.

Sorry