By Kimberly Veklerov
San Francisco Chronicle
OAKLAND, Calif. — As Oakland firefighters pulled up to the burning Ghost Ship warehouse the night of Dec. 2, they weren’t exactly sure what they were dealing with — whether anyone was trapped or what they would encounter inside — but they didn’t assume it was a vacant building.
Public safety officials in Oakland have long been aware that people live and party in warehouses — some firefighters say they can tell whether one is inhabited just by looking at its exterior. But even if the Fire Department didn’t know the Ghost Ship had people living in it, as Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed said, firefighters treated the blaze as they would any other burning building: They assumed someone was stuck inside.
That thinking, said fire Lt. Dan Robertson, requires a strategy of “aggressive interior attack” — which some fire departments, like Oakland’s, emphasize more than others. It’s why he and about eight other firefighters swarmed into the artists collective on 31st Avenue near International Boulevard with hoses and breathing apparatuses, even as pieces of the building were coming down around them.
The city has not yet released 911 calls that might indicate whether firefighters were told there were people in the Ghost Ship. Robertson said Wednesday that he didn’t remember what the message was to him and his crew as they headed to the fire just before 11:30 p.m. from their station house about a mile away.
“If it’s a boarded-up building, if it’s a vacant warehouse, no matter what, with the housing crisis and even before the housing crisis in Oakland, we just assume that people could be inside,” Robertson said.
But he added, “For me, once I got on the scene, I was not aware that there were confirmed people trapped, until we pulled out and went defensive.”
Other firefighters dispatched that night agreed. They didn’t recall getting any information about people being trapped.
“We had no clue whatsoever that there was anybody inside,” said one firefighter, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak publicly. “We had no clue, no indication. It looked at first like a typical empty commercial building fire.”
Many of those standing outside the warehouse said they didn’t know how many were inside, either. Some said they joked about the art burning down or posted videos to Instagram, not realizing there would be fatalities.
“Usually people are screaming at us, grabbing us,” Robertson said. “But that didn’t initially happen. There were a ton of people in the street, milling around. I think they were kind of stunned.”
Deloach Reed said Tuesday that no one from the Fire Department had ever inspected the Ghost Ship for safety violations because its owner never applied for permits that would have put the building on the city’s radar. For all the Fire Department knew, she said, the building was an empty warehouse, and “we do not inspect vacant buildings.”
Robertson, who is president of the city firefighters union, said he didn’t know if any firefighter — including those at the station a block away from the warehouse — were aware that people were living in the Ghost Ship. But it wouldn’t have made a difference when the fire call came in, he said.
“How do you know it’s vacant?” he said. “This is Oakland — people live in vacant houses.”
The Ghost Ship had been occupied by 15 to 30 artists and others since 2014. One resident was among the 36 who died; the rest were guests at an electronic music party.
Although no firefighters were injured Dec. 2, conditions inside the two-story structure were perilous. The crews were dealing with intense heat and near-zero visibility because of the smoke. As they pushed farther into the first floor, trying to find the source of the blaze, firefighters had to thread their hoses through a maze of furniture, pianos and art pieces.
“Conditions aren’t getting any better,” Robertson said. “The crackling and the roar of the fire above you and behind you is getting more intense rather than starting to subside. The water that’s reflecting down off the ceiling and walls from the hose stream is getting hotter.”
One firefighter said it was like “being blindfolded and sticking your head in an oven.”
Eventually, as some firefighters’ breathing apparatuses were running low on air and as the ceiling joists and joist hangers started burning, the battalion chief outside gave the order to get out.
As firefighters shifted to a defensive strategy — applying water from outside to keep the flames from spreading to other structures — the warehouse’s second floor collapsed.
Firefighters were never able to find the makeshift staircase that led to the second floor, where many of the victims are believed to have been trapped. But finding a way up might not have changed the death toll — Robertson said there were no screams or any sign of life inside the building by the time firefighters got there.
“You always wonder if you could do things better,” he said. “Every time you go to a call, every time you go to a fire, up until the day you retire, you try to do better and learn more and think of things you could’ve done differently.”
Still, he said, “I can’t think of major operational things we could’ve done differently. I certainly can’t think of anything that would’ve made a difference.”
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