Lt. Mark Tait, with the East Bay Regional Park District, helped remove the last 10 bodies from the warehouse as part of the East Bay Incident Management Team.
By FireRescue1 Staff
OAKLAND, Calif. — Over a month after the fatal Ghost Ship warehouse fire that killed 36 people, a firefighter who responded to the blaze shared the emotional toll he has since suffered.
Lt. Mark Tait was one of numerous firefighters who responded to the Dec. 2, 2016 blaze. He helped remove 10 bodies from the warehouse, reported KTVU.
“Nobody should ever be able to see even one victim [and] that night I saw 10. So, I have to turn something off inside of me. But it still affects me,” Lt. Tait said.
Tait said the most difficult moment was when he and other rescue workers found the bodies of couple Michela Gregory and Alex Vega.
“It almost looked like they knew they [Vega and Gregory] were going to die and so he was embracing her,” Lt. Tait said. “For some weird reason, my mind goes right to my wife if we were in that situation [because] I would protect her to the very end … and that’s what he [Vega] was doing.”
During the long hours of searching the warehouse, firefighters worked in three-hour shifts to offset the mental and physical strain. Lt. Tait said there are still details from handling victims that are triggered from everyday aspects of life.
“There was a [victim] who had an article of clothing on and about a week later I was in San Francisco and I saw that article of clothing on a woman,” Lt. Tait said. “My hands started sweating and my head started racing. I had to get out of there.”
Lt. Tait said speaking about the emotional toll of the fire acts as a positive coping mechanism.
“I wish this never happened,” he said.