Oakland City Hall reacts:
Civic leaders considering suing the Raiders and the NFL over the move.
Three people were killed and a fourth was missing after an early morning fire Monday ripped through a large transitional housing building in West Oakland where fire inspectors had found 11 glaring safety violations just three days earlier.
As friends and neighbors awaited identifications of the dead, public records revealed the city had responded to numerous complaints about the building at 2551 San Pablo Ave. The records again raised questions about city property inspections in the wake of December’s catastrophic Ghost Ship fire, which killed
36 people.
Following a Feb. 25 referral for a fire safety inspection at the building by the Fire Department, the Oakland Fire Prevention Bureau said it could not get inside.
It took a second request March 18 before inspectors finally gained access on Friday. Once inside, inspectors said they found the 11 flagrant violations, including units lacking smoke detectors and fire extinguishers, a malfunctioning sprinkler system and a series of extension cords.
Under Oakland fire code, property owners have 30 days to correct such violations, a spokeswoman for the city said. There were 27 days left when the roof of the three-story building erupted in flames just after 5:30 a.m. Monday, sending heavy smoke into the dawn sky.
Firefighters rescued at least 15 people who had been trapped in the building, some who knotted sheets into makeshift ropes and lowered themselves from third-floor windows.
Ed Silva, a Red Cross official, said more than 100 people were displaced by the fire, including 60 to 80 who were tenants as well as “dozens of squatters.” They were taken to a shelter at the West Oakland Youth Center.
Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County coroner, said late Monday that three people had died, including Edwarn Anderson, 64, who lived in the building. Battalion Chief Erik Logan of the Oakland Fire Department said four people were hospitalized, some with smoke inhalation, but were expected to be released Monday night.
Residents said a church deacon and a woman who had recently moved into the building were among the dead.
The building has been the source of complaints about living conditions for years. City records show tenants had filed 20 complaints over the past 10 years, citing rodent infestations, lack of heat and garbage collection, mold and mildew, and urine and feces on the floors. Attorneys for residents said squatters had taken over the third floor.
City inspectors agreed with a complaint from Urojas Community Services, the master tenant, which alleged “deferred maintenance.” The organization, which runs transitional housing and social service programs, was embroiled in a dispute over evictions that started just days after the Ghost Ship fire.
After the latest complaint Feb. 23, inspectors with the city’s planning and building departments inspected the property Feb. 28 and March 3, they said. A follow-up was scheduled April 18.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf released a statement expressing her condolences to the victims and their families. “I want to offer my deepest sympathies to the families who have been hurt and displaced by this tragic fire,” she said, “and to the loved ones of the victims whose lives we know were lost.”
Residents of the building that burned Monday and their attorney, James Cook, said the landlord, Keith Kim, had issued eviction notices in December to dozens of residents living on the first two floors of the building. Residents said they were told the Ghost Ship fire was the reason for the evictions.
Attorneys for the residents have been battling the eviction effort since then, employing a mediator and Oakland City Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney to help settle the dispute. McElhaney did not return calls seeking comment, nor did Kim.
Cook provided a March 17 letter giving Urojas Community Services a 30-day eviction notice. Under California law, businesses may be evicted with such notices without cause. Cook contended that it was obvious people were living in the building and should have been subject to the more stringent process of residential evictions.
Documents filed in Alameda County Superior Court recount a February incident in which Kim purportedly led a group of men into the building in an attempt to evict residents, prompting two to request restraining orders against Kim.
One of the tenants, Gail Harbin, alleged that Kim and the other men went into the building on three occasions and changed tenants’ locks, told them not to pay rent to Urojas Community Services, and forcibly removed items from people’s apartments and threw them onto the street. Harbin said the men threatened violence if anyone sought to intervene.
Cook said he visited the building early this year during a rainstorm and witnessed exposed wiring and water pouring through leaks and flowing down the floor “like a river.” There were overflowing toilets and people living two or three to a room, he said.
“They were terrible conditions,” he said. “Uninhabitable really.”
Asia Wade, 32, who had been living in the building since July, said she filed a complaint with the city the first week she moved in, but nothing changed.
“It was like rats, roaches, bed bugs. I had black mold underneath my kitchen sink. The floor was sunken in,” she said. They “never ever repaired it.”
Emails provided by Cook suggest the city was well aware of the conditions and that McElhaney was trying to negotiate a deal for residents to voluntarily move out so the building could be rehabilitated. That agreement apparently fell apart.
In the Ghost Ship disaster, Oakland faces criticism that it failed to take action against the owner and operator of the underground warehouse despite a number of warning signs.
Prior to the blaze, city police officers had been told the warehouse was illegally occupied and had responded to complaints about unpermitted raves. Building inspectors had responded to complaints about the warehouse, which was a maze of electrical cords, makeshift stairs and sleeping areas. And Oakland’s now-retired fire chief, Teresa Deloach Reed, said days after the fire that her department was not aware that the Ghost Ship existed.
The cause of Monday’s fire remained under investigation. Residents said it was started by an unattended candle, but Logan, the battalion chief, did not confirm that. Agents with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting in the investigation, he said.
Logan said the firefight had been difficult. Firefighters, he said, thought they saw a body on the second floor when they entered the building but couldn’t reach the person before flames and heavy smoke caused them to pull out of the building.
Fantazhia LaTonda, 44, one of the evacuated residents, sat nearly a block away from the fire huddled under blankets with her boyfriend, watching her home go up in flames. She had moved into the building two weeks ago.
She said the first and second floors housed a drug rehabilitation center. LaTonda lived in an apartment on the third floor, next door to where she said the fire started.
“I woke up to get a snack, and I went to lay back down and I looked out the window and I saw sparks and I kept hearing crackling,” she said.
She and her boyfriend tried to open the door of their room, but she said the handles were too hot to touch. They opened the curtains of their window and began waving outside to get the attention of the firefighters.
“I was scared. I thought I was going to die,” LaTonda said.
The firefighters grabbed them through the window and pulled them onto the fire escape, she said. Now, she said, everything she owns is gone.
“I was worried we weren't going to get out,” she said. “Just burning. That's not the way I want to die.”
San Francisco Chronicle staff writers Trisha Thadani, Cynthia Dizikes and Joaquin Palomino contributed to this story.