Oakland fire: Many complaints filed about warehouse
Oakland, California (CNN)The city of Oakland received repeated complaints over the years about the Ghost Ship warehouse, where 36 people were killed in a fire last week.
The site, along with an adjacent lot, had become cluttered with old cars, oil containers, pests and trash, according to those complaints.
Many of the 10 complaints were directed at the lot, pointing to a “ton of garbage piling up on the property” as well as the “illegal interior building structure” at the warehouse, according to city records released Tuesday.
The site was damaged in a fire in 1988, but additional information on that incident was not immediately available.
The Ghost Ship was a coveted haven in the Bay Area’s gentrifying landscape of skyrocketing rents and disappearing artist spaces. Residents estimate 20 to 25 artists lived there.
Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, who is from Oakland, wrote on Instagram that he had many years ago “lived in warehouses and communal spaces like Ghost Ship. …”
“… (T)hose were some of the best and most fulfilling times in my life. living with other weirdos, artists, activists, and musicians … spaces like this allow the strange ones to thrive and be the people that normal society rejects.
“(W)e inspired each other, laughed together, and created new friends and family we didn’t know existed. The city of Oakland provided that for me and my closest friends,” he posted with a photo from a Monday night vigil.
The warehouse was to be used only as a commercial space and had not received any residential or public assembly permits. City officials didn’t sign off on a special permit for the Friday event, said Darin Ranelletti, Oakland’s interim director of planning and building,
Oakland officials are seeking to declare a local emergency to get state and federal funding. That request will go before the City Council during a special meeting Thursday.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/07/us/oakland-fire-investigation/index.html