Story is over 2 days old, but I haven't seen t posted yet here.
Oakland had a building nicknamed "The Ghost Ship", a warehouse converted into a makeshift group of artists' spaces and areas to sleep.
It was known as a "crash pad" for artists from out of the area who could not afford to stay at hotels in the SF/Oakland Bay Area.
However, due to the copious amount of clutter throughout the building, along with the fact that it was not built to be residential and lacked various fire safety measures, it was known to some as a "death trap", and at least 36 people paid with their lives during a fire on Friday night.
The fire occurred on Friday night at 11:30pm, just as a late-night electronica dance party had started there.
In one scathing 2015 post on yellowpages.com, someone who had once lived there wrote: http://www.yellowpages.com/oakland-c...yuga-502860330
Owner Derick Ion is unstable and dangerous. He does not honor agreements and gets violent, demanding thousands of extra dollars for imagined grievances. If not appeased, he has been known to violently react and steal anything that has not been removed from the space. DO NOT DO BUSINESS HERE. Additionally, the place is an absolute deathtrap - one incident, and anybody unfortunate enough to be inside will be trapped in a mountain of trash and improvised construction.
There were apparently 18 full-time residents there.
There were a number of complaints to the city regarding the safety of the building, including one on November 17, but apparently these were not followed up on aggressively.
It is assumed that most on the second floor died, as the staircase was poorly constructed, narrow, and difficult to find amid the clutter.
Some of you might remember Colleen. I remember she had a space in a warehouse like this in Los Angeles for some time. Similar to this one, a lot of people were cramped into a small space, and it would often have late night parties. I don't believe she lived there, though.
I believe this is the worst US fire as far as death toll since the 2003 Rhode Island fire at a nightclub during a concert by the band "Great White".
You can actually see the disturbing scene unfold there in this video shot by a TV cameraman there: