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

Ellen Knickmeyer and Paul Elias, Associated Press

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

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:

In Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney announced a citywide crackdown on spaces like the Ghost Ship.

“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.

Related: Artists, musicians, teachers among the 36 victims

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

By MARISA KENDALL | mkendall@bayareanewsgroup.com and MICHELLE QUINN | mquinn@bayareanewsgroup.com

PUBLISHED: December 10, 2016 at 6:00 am | UPDATED: December 11, 2016 at 7:10 am

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/

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/

Oakland Firefighters @OaklandFireLive

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

11:31 PM - 2 Dec 2016

 
•  33 Retweets
 
•  4

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

ReutersDecember 9, 2016

By Heather Somerville, Kristina Cooke and Dan Levine

(Reuters) - In the two years leading up to the fire at an Oakland, California warehouse that killed 36 people at a dance party late last week, city officials had entered the building on numerous occasions and had multiple opportunities to see that residents were illegally living there in hazardous conditions.

The Oakland Police Department received dozens of complaints about the warehouse, and went inside at least half a dozen times, according to police reports and accounts from former tenants and visitors.

A former friend and tenant also say city fire officials were in the building at least twice.

Those who spent time in the artists' cooperative known as the "Ghost Ship," say that potential code violations would have been apparent to anyone entering the building, which was not permitted for residence.

Living quarters with narrow, winding halls were built from scrap materials, including highly flammable wooden pallets. Nails were exposed, plumbing improvised and a makeshift stairway to the second floor was extremely hazardous, they say.

"If you opened the door and stepped even three feet inside it would be grossly apparent to anyone that it wasn't just being used as a warehouse or a workspace," said former Ghost Ship neighbor Ben Acevedo, 45, who estimates he made about 60 calls to police about the property over 16 months to report noise, blight and illegal occupancy.

On Wednesday, amid questions about why the city did not act to shut down the warehouse, an Oakland official said that code enforcement personnel had not entered the building in 30 years.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said she did not know the last time fire inspectors had gone inside. She did not mention police visits, but said the city would launch a new effort "to clarify the responsibility of city employees to properly report any observations of dangerous living conditions or illegal events."

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

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.

Medical Care Like Outside the U.S.

Travelling Overseas? Good to know about medical care in case of emergency & local hospitals.
What is Medical Care Like Outside the U.S.?

Posted by John Eganon February 22, 2016in Travel

When you visit the ER or the doctor's office in the U.S., you pretty much know the routine. That routine isn't the same in other countries, however. From Argentina to Zimbabwe, people access health care in a variety of ways.

Here's a look at how medical care works in a number of popular travel destinations outside the U.S., and how American travelers might receive care in the event of an unexpected illness or injury while abroad:

France

In France, the federal government covers most medical bills for its citizens, with funding derived from income and payroll taxes. Expenses not covered by the government are paid by a patient's private insurance.

Sweden

Swedish patients who must wait more than 90 days for planned operations or treatments are guaranteed that these costs will be covered by a county government.

...............

Brazil

Brazilians have developed a community-based approach to universal health care, assigning Primary Care Teams to 150 households per geographical area. Healthcare services are free for legal citizens and travelers may find out that it's important to do research prior to traveling to Brazil, as it is common to encounter many doctors who do not speak English.

If you plan to visit Rio De Janiero for the upcoming 2016 Olympics, be advised, public health care will not be available. You are strongly advised to purchase travel medical insurance.

http://www.hccmis.com/blog/travel/medical-care-outside-the-us/?utm_source=Outbrain%20Contently&utm_medium=paid%20social&utm_campaign=blog%20traffic&utm_term=5376658

 

Eating Dog Meat.

EATING DOG MEAT IN THE WORLD: A Thai website lists the following countries or regions where mainstream culture favours or at least condones dog meat eating: 1. China; 2. Indonesia; 3. Mexico; 4. Philippines; 5. Taiwan; 6. Korea; 7. Switzerland; 8. Vietnam; 9. Polynesia; 10. Siberia; 11. Alaska; 12. North Canada; 13. Groenland — See:

http://thaispca.org/?page_id=39&lang=en

In the same site, world dog population is evaluated at 500 M and dogs killed for consumption at 16 M per year, i.e. 3.2 %.

These figures can be compared with the following:

Some 21,000 children die every day around the world.

That is equivalent to:

1 child dying every 4 seconds;

14 children dying every minute;

A 2011 Libya conflict-scale death toll every day;

A 2010 Haiti earthquake occurring every 10 days;

A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every 11 days;

An Iraq-scale death toll every 19–46 days;

Just under 7.6 million children dying every year;

Some 92 million children dying between 2000 and 2010;

The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage.

Too Poor To Retire.

Reprinted from Los Angeles Times:
JAN. 29, 2016 | REPORTING FROM DARIEN, N.Y.
http://graphics.latimes.com/retirement-nomads/ 

Sad but true stories of many older Americans who can not afford to retire.

I usually have a short attention span, this is a compelling article that I can understand and identified with. I read it all the way though to the end. As a real estate agent & started this endeavor in 2007, I have seen my fair share of homes being taken over by the banks. I have had to work on short sale & sell homes for clients who lost their jobs and no longer can afford to keep their homes. I have had my fair share of sadness seeing all the belongings left behind in the garages; family albums, children's shoes, books, clothes, boxes and boxes of stuff they no longer can take with them etc. I have so many friends who have been in these positions described in this article. This is one of the most heart breaking, real life stories & who knows how many more are out there? This is what's going on in our country, shrinking middleclass, aging poor and homelessness. 

A

t the wise age of 79, Dolores Westfall knows food shopping on an empty stomach is a fool’s errand. On her way to the grocery store last May, she pulled into the Town & Country Family Restaurant to take the edge off her appetite.

ADVERTISEMENT

After much consideration, she ordered the prime rib special and an iced tea — expensive at $21.36, but the leftovers, wrapped carefully to go, would provide two more lunches.

The problem, she later realized, was that a big insurance bill was coming due. How was she going to pay it? Was she going to tip into insolvency over a plate of prime rib?

“I thought I could handle eating and shopping,” she said, “but lunch put me over the top.”

Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next....

Continued on LA TIMES with more story & pictures..

Ageism??

A Case of Agism?
Fremont woman finds herself living on the street
By Rebecca Parr, rparr@bayareanewsgroup.com Stephanie Welch weathered the booms and busts of Silicon Valley since its infancy in the 1960s, always able to find a job but that changed during the recession and a health setback where she now finds herself living on the street and bewildered. 

2016-3-5 11:00:00 A.M.

Reprinted from The San Jose Mercury News:

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_29598188/fremont-woman-finds-herself-living-on-the-street

After weathering booms and busts of Silicon Valley, Fremont woman finds herself living on the street By Rebecca Parr, rparr@bayareanewsgroup.com Doug Stewart, with the Central County Homeless Outreach program, looks for homeless under an overpass late in the evening in Martinez, Calif., on Thursday, March 4, 2016. Stewart started the Central County Homeless Outreach program 13 years ago to help them in whatever ways he could. And now, after ... Central County Homeless Outreach founder to end operations

FREMONT -- Stephanie Welch weathered the booms and busts of Silicon Valley since its infancy in the 1960s, always able to find a job.

But that changed during the recession when Welch, then in her late 50s, could not even get an interview. Since 2010, her life has spiraled downward, and Welch now finds herself living on the street and bewildered.

"The ageism -- I never saw it coming," she said.

Welch is homeless, pushing a shopping cart with some of her things around a retail parking lot in the Warm Springs neighborhood.

"I was raised here; I went to Mission San Jose. Warm Springs is a comfort for me. I don't know where else I would go," she said.....

Anatomy of My Suicide

Anatomy of My Suicide by Mike Marino

 Ever since I first wrote this I get many emails and IM's about other people who also suffer from depression, Some minor bouts, some serious and I usually send this to them...you are not alone, and the battle can be won. 

Contrary to the song, Suicide is not painless. It’s murder of self that can’t be explained...It can strike anyone, and fame and fortune is not a hedge against it. Hemingway, Thompson, Robin Williams...all had the world by the balls, on the surface, but in reality the world had them by the balls...It’s a steamy jungle where you can’t see 10 feet in front of you...when the bus stops to pick you up...there are no transfers...you go all the way to the end of the line..to the appropriately named..”terminal”

Could be an incurable disease that will steal life and love from you and the sense of loss of life and love wrenched from your hands against your will makes your head pound and ponder, as you wonder and wander.

Close your eyes and see the beauty of life and love..open them and you see only your own reflection..your name on some invisible memorial wall. Your walk becomes weary and your mind moves in slow motion frame by frame into a film noir sequence, dark, slow..as you swim upstream like some insane salmon with a asylum agenda...your walk takes you against the tide of life, against the downward flow of a thousand liquid rain children freely falling from the skies, falling and bouncing down the stairs and then out onto the street. You dodge them artfully as you tread deftly, as though they were, and they are, projectiles from space, fired from the moon at the behest of a beast from the outer rings of Saturn.

Your life of manic ups and downs, uppers and downers becomes crippled, battered, embattled….the mirror reflection is that of empty eye sockets and you are already in an emotional body bag in an enclosed alley from which there is no escape imprisoned in an psychological wheelchair and straightjacket while hopped up on narco midnight pills interjecting injections of sweet dreamy morphine. Drugs and alcohol inducing calm or can increase the manic desire so the self murderer can circumnavigate your own private Polar Ice Caps, past giant icebergs, round and round the Cape we go, circular explorations they are, easy to negotiate, except for those 90 degree corners of fleeting reality that appeared only as more hallucinations obscuring what they really were. Those recesses, the corners, the 90 degree forks in the emotional road, are illuminated in deep shadow by electric currents, pulsating and twitching.

A broken mirror fires back olfactory warning shots over the head trying to blast through rocks to make a tunnel through the mountain of depression..some will make it to the summit...others will plunge to their death....eating a pile of pills or loading a gun...racing to meet the inevitable anyway.

Soon the film of your life ends as you fade to black...Finis!
Fight...win the battle with life and love, friends and family and the power within!

Real Hero! Teachers Feed Kids Out of Their Own Pockets

Hero Teachers Feed Kids Out of Their Own Pockets

BY MARY MURRAY 

The day's lesson isn't the first thing on Marvin Callahan's mind after the first school bell rings. Instead, the Albuquerque, New Mexico, teacher wonders whether his students have eaten.

His routine begins by asking each one of his first-grade pupils what her or she ate for breakfast that morning.

"I have kids that come to school every day, and they're hungry. They come to school, and they're just unsure," said the Comanche Elementary School teacher. "I have seen it with my own eyes,"

Every day, the 20-year veteran teacher spends a chunk of his own salary to feed hungry kids in his classroom. For the kid who came to school on an empty stomach, Callahan either sends the child to the cafeteria or simply walks over to the supply closet behind his desk for some food. Many teachers use $40 a month of their own cash to buy supplemental food for these hungry children.
http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/making-a-difference/hero-teachers-feed-kids-out-their-own-pockets-n192861

Syrian Refugee Total Passes 3 Million in 'Biggest Humanitarian Emergency of Our Era' 

 

By Liz Fields

August 30, 2014 | 10:45 am The Syrian civil war has caused the displacement of at least a million people in the last year, adding to a total of more than 3 million that have fled the country since the conflict began, according to new figures released by the United Nations agency for refugees (UNHCR).
The figures indicate the mass exodus of one in every eight Syrians, vying to escape the worsening conflict in their home country where reports of atrocities committed by Islamic State extremists — including public executions, staged crucifixions and beheadings — are emerging almost daily.
"The Syria crisis has become the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era, yet the world is failing to meet the needs of refugees and the countries hosting them," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said from the agency's headquarters in Geneva.
"A further 6.5 million are displaced within Syria. Over half of those uprooted are children," a UNHCR statement added.
Islamic State militants are waging a deadly jihadist war in the region, which took a sharp turn in June when the group declared an Islamic caliphate over the areas of land it occupies in both Syria and Iraq. Syrian civilians are shouldering the full impact of the brutal civil conflict that began in March 2011 and has left more than 190,000 dead so far.
https://news.vice.com/article/syrian-refugee-total-passes-3-million-in-biggest-humanitarian-emergency-of-our-era

WWW: Wide World Wars

Iraq

US conducts new airstrikes as ISIS kills dozens of Yazidis in Iraq town, officials say

The U.S. military conducted new airstrikes against Islamic militants Friday as sources tell Fox News members of the group killed at least 90 male members of Iraq's Yazidi minority in a northern village and kidnapped "dozens" of women and children.
A senior U.S. defense official told Fox News that U.S. surveillance drones saw evidence of the massacre of dozens of Yazidi men. The U.S. military later struck two militant targets, killing some of those involved in the killings, the source said.

The U.S. military said in a statement Friday that the U.S. forces conducted the airstrikes on Islamic State vehicles in the village of Kawju. The village is located south of the village of Sinjar.
The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethnic and religious group which numbers in the hundreds of thousands in Iraq, has been persecuted in the north by Islamic State militants, with at least 500 killed prior to Friday's news, according to Iraq's human rights minister.
Sources told Fox News it appears residents in the village did not comply with the militants' demands to convert to Islam.
"[Militants] arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon,'' senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters. "We believe it's because of their creed: convert or be killed."
A Yazidi lawmaker and another senior Kurdish official also said the killings had taken place and that the women of the village were kidnapped.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/08/16/isis-massacres-dozens-yazidi-in-northern-iraq-town-say-iraqi-officials/?cmpid=edpick&google_editors_picks=true

Environmental Impacts.

These cities are doing the right things. Hopefully they started the trend and other
cities in the US and cities around the world will follow them.

New York City bans Styrofoam

New York's City Council voted unanimously to ban the use of polystyrene (Styrofoam) containers yesterday. New York is now the largest U.S. city to implement such a ban on single-use foam containers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to sign the bill into law before leaving office at the end of the year. NBC New York reports that Bloomberg supports the ban: 

"Foam pollutes the waste stream, making it harder to recycle food waste as well as metal glass and plastic," the mayor said in a statement after the vote.

http://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/new-york-city-bans-styrofoam.html

1. Los Angeles plastic bag ban starts on Jan. 1

   Los Angeles Daily News ‎- by Rick Orlov ‎- 16 hours ago

   After Jan. 1, Los Angeles shoppers will no longer be presented with that checkout choice: Paper or plastic? 
2. Instead, they will be required to bring in their own reusable bags or pay 10 cents for each paper bag they need.

   The city’s plastic bag ban will start with stores of more than 10,000 square feet or with annual sales of more than $2 million. Then, beginning on July 1, the ban will extend to smaller stores such as mini-marts.

   Los Angeles is joining a growing trend of cities across the country — in California alone, about 90 cities or counties have passed plastic bag ordinances within recent years, according to the group Californians Against Waste.

Los Angeles Bans Free Plastic Bags In Grocery Stores

www.huffingtonpost.com/.../los-angeles-plastic-bags-banned_n_350057...‎

Jun 25, 2013 - LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles became the biggest city in the country to ban free plastic bags in grocery stores following a city council vote ..

San Francisco Bans Styrofoam for To-Go Containers

April 13, 2007

San Francisco does it again. A few weeks ago the city banned the use of all plastic shopping bags other than biodegradable and recyclable ones. Now, effective June 1, 2007, the law will require San Francisco food vendors who sell prepared food to use compostable or recyclable to-go containers as well. "San Francisco food vendors may no longer use polystyrene foam otherwise known as Styrofoamâ„¢ and must use compostable or recyclable disposable food service ware or to-go containers unless there is no suitable product that is within 15% of the cost of non-compostable or non-recyclable alternatives," an article said. Compostable products include coated and uncoated paper or other natural fiber products and plant-based plastic-like products that are clearly labeled. We know several restaurants, like Mixt Greens, who already uses the products, but we're interested to see if more cities will take San Fran's lead. ::SF Environment Related ::Eco-To-Go ::What to Do with Used Styrofoam