Paltry sentence for Ghost Ship fire that killed my daughter
Editor’s note: Derick Almena, the master tenant of the compound where 36 people died on Dec. 2, 2016, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday after pleading guilty to three dozen counts of involuntary manslaughter. The author is the mother of one of the victims, Chelsea Faith Dolan.
Life goes on. Each night, terrifying visions of fire and smoke haunt my dreams. Each morning, I tuck the fear back inside a quiet, dark chamber of my heart and mentally prepare myself for another workday.
In an odd way, the COVID-19 “shelter in place” has eased my grief. Working from home has given me time to write and reflect on my altered life. Chelsea is dead. I accept that now. At times, I still expect her to bound through my front door, laughing with news of the day, but those times come less frequently. Solitude
and therapy have taught me how to calm my anxiety. I miss Chelsea terribly, but I’ve learned to carry on. Until now.
In unbelievable irony, a feeble plea bargain in the criminal case against the architect of the Ghost Ship tragedy, Derick Almena, will afford him the same peace and solitude that has comforted me. The plea bargain sentence is supposed to be 12 years, but it will be cut back with time off for good behavior and the roughly four years he has already spent in jail and home detention.
Almena will wind up serving 1½ more years confined to his home, and three years on supervised parole. The plea bargain is nothing more than an extended stay-at-home order with his family.
This is not justice. Almena flaunted his pseudo-pirate mission to “be awesome” above the lives and safety of others. His strutting and lies were designed to keep inspectors at bay. When safety concerns were voiced, Almena
bellowed, “We don’t do things that way.” He flagrantly circumvented regulations and lied about illegal use of the warehouse.
It was his responsibility to make the living spaces and the upstairs event venue safe, whether it was legal or not. He refused. All he cared about was his reputation as the outlaw head of a wannabe “art collective” built on the Craigslist promise of cheap rent. Almena is not a child. His whining, “Nobody told me it was dangerous,” reeks of self-indulgence, willful stupidity and false ignorance. He knew.
Almena built out the Ghost Ship warehouse with a public party room on the second floor that was only accessible to guests by a narrow stairway and ramp. There was no direct access to the front door. No lit exit signs pointed the way. Secondstory windows were hidden behind false walls. Within minutes of the first spark, the dry wood of the stairs went up in flames and thick, black smoke rolled through the first floor of the warehouse.
A few of the victims who made it downstairs turned in the wrong direction through the labyrinth of pianos, organs, hanging fabric, tree stumps and myriad wooden oddities. Because old doors and windows were hung confusingly in random locations, victims blinded by the dense smoke might have thought they had found a way out. They had not. No warning alarms. No time to react because of the intensity of the fire from the extreme fuel load, and no sprinklers or drywall to stop it.
Had one fire bell sounded, had one smoke detector screamed a warning, the guests upstairs might have escaped. We know this because all but one of the residents on the first floor who were warned by the sight of smoke and flames made it out alive, and that one resident broke an ankle falling from his loft on his way out. None of them warned the guests upstairs. Something as simple as a working fire alarm would have saved lives.
At a recent court hearing, Almena mumbled the word “guilty” 36 times, once for each victim’s name read aloud. The word means nothing to him.
All he had to do was mouth the sound of those syllables to be awarded an unimaginably light sentence.
The 36 stars lived with driving purpose and love. Their lives will not go on. Their legacy will.
The plea bargain is nothing more than an extended stay-athome order with his family.