Oakland warehouse: propane tanks, exposed & sparking wires, generators, hot plates, extension cords

[Liberal_in_LA]

Tenants describe conditions inside site of deadly fire
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 33 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.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tenants-describe-conditions-inside-site-of-deadly-10691108.php

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.”

[FarCenter]

1. How can this happen in thoroughly regulated California?

Especially in Oakland with a progressive municipal government?

[dembotoz]

3. Guy in the condo behind me did a do it yourself power hookup without paying

The local power folks were all over it
The cops were involved too.
All over it

So steal a little power...can not do
Steal more power. .aok?

Power company workers who dealt with the impromptu hookup were clearly not amused at the bush league work.
Can not see how these guys out there did not go thru the roof

[MineralMan]

4. It appears that the City of Oakland was aware

of this place, but did not shut it down, as it should have. The city's legal liability is enormous. The lawsuits against the city will be many. The judgments or settlements will be huge.

Clearly, their code enforcement department knew about the place and there were many complaints. That they did not inspect and require the building to come up to code or be vacated is all on the city.

Others, of course, also have legal responsibility, but they have no money. Oakland does. Deep pockets pay for such disasters.

[alarimer]

5. The owner needs to be brought up on murder charges.

Yes, the city bears responsibility too, for not inspecting it, but ultimately the liability belongs with whoever owns it. If they go to prison for murder, maybe others will clean up their acts.

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. the guy renting out the units is not the owner. He leased from the owner

[Iggo]

6. Why do you hate artists?

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. what!!!????

[dumbcat]

11. Because they violate safety codes?

And get people burned to death? (Some of them, anyway.)

[gratuitous]

12. I see what you did there

There's always a really good reason to not follow regulations like the fire code, or not to regulate at all. I think Paul Ryan has "job-killing government regulations" on auto-fill. Government regulation (and enforcement) is required so that catastrophic fires like this aren't happening every other day or so. Yeah, it's expensive to retrofit old buildings with panic bars, emergency lighting, sprinkler systems, and to maintain safe occupancy levels. Too bad. The alternative is a pile of charred corpses.

[Iggo]

13. Yep. There were attempts in the immediate aftermath to try to say "That's just how they live" or...

..."If they didn't live like that then they'd be out on the street."

I wanted to say, "I'd rather have a live homeless artist than fifty burned-up dead ones."

But that ain't right, either. I've been homeless and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

What I really want is for people to create spaces that don't kill other people.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

14. Because you have bad manners!

[Iggo]

15. Well, yeah. And they're gross.

[malaise]

9. Truly sad

Young people need regulations big time.

[Eleanors38]

10. All over the U.S. Either shut them down or allow poor people affordable housing.

This is the quandry authorities face. Thousands live beneath Miami expressway overpasses, artists in Austin live in parititioned-off wooden "rooms" in a wooden warehouse.

What does your city have?