Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Ghostship Fire More Articles


Video Inside Ghostship Fire Found:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Fire-victim-Jennifer-Mendiola-Doctorate-dancing-10781979.php


Firefighter: Warehouse missing from fire-inspection records

Updated 9:44 pm, Thursday, December 8, 2016
http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Investigators-to-look-at-electrical-system-in-10782232.php

The Video from the actual firefighter's truck..

https://twitter.com/OaklandFireLive/status/804966374506274816


Sunday, December 11, 2016

Oakland warehouse fire leads to crackdown

SO NOW...

Oakland warehouse fire leads to crackdown on illegal artist spaces around the country

Dylan Stableford,Yahoo News 8 hours ago

In Baltimore, dozens of artists living in a building known as the Bell Foundry were evicted last week after the city said it received a complaint “about individuals living there in deplorable conditions.”
“The main electrical source had illegal, dangerous connections; there were extension cords used to feed multiple fixtures,” said Katy Byrne, a spokeswoman for Baltimore’s Department of Housing and Community Development. “None of the electrical systems was grounded.”
In Denver, fire officials shut down Rhinoceropolis, a landmark “DIY” performance space, and evicted five people who had been living in illegal lofts on Thursday after it was deemed “unsafe.”

While the Denver Fire Department did not immediately specify what those safety violations were, a 2015 profile of the venue by Denver’s Westword gives a hint:

“As Philadelphia mourns with the people of Oakland, it’s also important to examine how we can prevent similar tragedies form occurring here,” Kenney said in a statement three days after the Oakland fire. “In our city there are unlawfully converted buildings and underground clubs, and while [the Department of Licenses and Inspections] works hard to track down these hazardous locations and enforce the fire code, they can’t do it alone.”

Kenney called on residents to report illegal holiday parties “in unsafe and misused spaces.”

In New York City, the Loft Law — first enacted in the early 1980s during the booming Soho art scene — and subsequent city task forces have forced many operators of illegal living spaces to bring them up to code, and cracked down on those who fail to comply.
Those measures, coupled with industrial neighborhoods becoming more and more gentrified, mean that fewer and fewer illegal spaces like the Ghost Ship exist within the five boroughs.
But make no mistake, they do still exist.
The New York Times reported investigations prompted by the Oakland warehouse blaze in other cities, including Nashville, Dallas, Austin, Indianapolis, New Haven, Conn., and Dubuque, Iowa.
In Oakland, some residents are wondering if the city missed repeated warnings about the Ghost Ship.
“Officials fielded years of complaints about dangerous conditions, drugs, neglected children, trash, thefts and squabbles at the illegally converted warehouse,” the Associated Press reported, “with inspectors knocking on the door as recently as two weeks before the blaze.”

At a press conference late last week, officials said that it appeared the warehouse was not equipped with smoke detectors and had no exits on the second floor. And Oakland Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said a criminal investigation is underway.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/oakland-warehouse-fire-leads-to-crackdown-on-illegal-artist-spaces-around-the-country-214021920.html

Oakland fire victims: A family of connections much larger than nightlife

Oakland fire victims: A family of connections much larger than nightlife

PUBLISHED:  | UPDATED: 





They were musicians, fans and artists, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who loved the weird, the surreal and each other. This was no random gathering of people who saw a flier about a party. To many, this was a surrogate family, an eclectic group that had spent many similar nights together, dancing and making music. They knew and admired each other’s work, played gigs together, ran sound and video for each other’s shows.

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2016/12/10/oakland-fire-victims-a-family-of-connections-much-larger-than-nightlife/

The last hours of Oakland’s Ghost Ship warehouse

Hallowing tales from the last hour of the Ghost Ship Fire.

The last hours of Oakland’s Ghost Ship warehouse

The harrowing stories of that night tell a heartbreaking tale of what was lost, and who should have known better.

Max Ohr, a jewelry maker and Ghost Ship resident, who served as doorman the night of the fire. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) 

“I greeted almost every single person who walked through that door,” said Ohr, 26, “and I’m usually the one who says goodbye to them at the end of the night as well.”

On this night, he would be screaming for them to escape.
On this night, Ohr would be the doorman to an epic tragedy, Oakland’s deadliest fire ever.
This was no natural disaster, no earthquake, no terrorist shooting. This disaster was avoidable; 36 people were victims not just of the smoke and fire, but of recklessness, bureaucracy and indifference.
The harrowing stories of that night — from those who made it out, those who traded panicked texts, and those who tried to help — tell a heartbreaking tale of what was lost and who should have known better.

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2016/12/11/oakland-fire-ghost-ship-last-hours/

31st Ave- 2nd alarm struck. E13 Fire Attack, E4 Back-Up fire attack.   

The Ghost Ship Fire Continued..

Politicians CAUGHT in a lie?? Seems like it.

Oakland city workers visited warehouse, did not flag fire hazard

By Heather Somerville, Kristina Cooke and Dan Levine
Reuters


https://www.yahoo.com/news/oakland-city-workers-visited-warehouse-did-not-flag-013402036.html

Thursday, December 08, 2016

The Ghost Ship Fire & The Local Politicians!!

The Ghost Ship Fire represented a BROKEN SYSTEM. The system was put in place to protect the people! Government is supposed to WORK FOR THE PEOPLE & SERVE THE PEOPLE.
Politicians are not doing what they should be doing.

We the people are sicked and tired of the BUREAUCRACY that are SELFISH, SELF-SERVING and IGNORANCE POLITICIANS!!!

"Local politicians clamber for scapegoats: leaseholder, inspector, or gig organizers? One city councilperson bizarrely offered “anarchist rejection of regulation.” Droves of distraught family and friends, meanwhile, gather to mourn in Oakland bars, homes, and warehouse residences reminiscent of Ghost Ship. Their talk centers on fallen community pillars, feckless and tone-deaf officials, survival, and the undertow of displacement. “It feels like the end of individualism around here,” Barenbaum said. “There’s just this needed commitment to solidarity.”     
..........


In 2007, Barenbaum co-founded storied underground venue Bay Area 51. It was in the expanded garage of a two-story San Francisco structure once used as a hippie bus depot. A professional electrician, she toiled and fretted over visitors’ safety. The eccentric, permissive landlord “lived on a sinking houseboat in Marin,” Barenbaum said, but he nevertheless ousted residents earlier this year to better tempt buyers.
By then, Bay Area 51 seemed starkly anachronistic against what outgoing residents consider technocrats’ antiseptic vision for San Francisco. And that narrative has migrated to Oakland, where Uber’s future headquarters sits downtown wrapped in tattered white plastic like a spurned gift. According to a recent report by the local organization Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, more than 50,000 formal eviction notices were posted between 2008 and 2015, a figure that only begins to reveal the scope of displacement in Oakland.
“With more than 2,000 [eviction notices] a year, it makes sense that people are living in these precarious scenarios,” said Erin McElroy, cofounder of the Mapping Project. “And a crackdown isn’t going to keep people out of unsafe places. It’s going to accelerate it. …The priority of the city should be securing affordable housing for residents and preventing evictions.”
City officials often decry the housing crisis, but the recent Mapping Project report includes a troubling finding: Oakland’s leading “mega-evictor,” William Rosetti, whose associated companies are responsible for over 4,000 evictions in the period studied, is a member of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s handpicked “housing cabinet.”
“When [Schaaf] was asked about it, she said that she wanted a diverse group, including landlords and tenants rights people, but the fact that the landlord she chose is behind 4,000 evictions is significant,” McElroy said. “People with that much property here have always had the power.” 


The damage; photo by Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images



What remains of Ghost Ship; photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images







http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1383-after-ghost-ship-fire-oakland-diy-grapples-with-a-broken-system/


http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/SOH2016

The State of Homelessness in America 2016

On a single night in January 2015, 564,708 people were experiencing homelessness — meaning they were sleeping outside or in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program.