Fire team advised shutting blaze site
Oakland responders noted exposed wires, blocked exit
Oakland firefighters urged senior fire officials in January to consider immediately shutting down the West Oakland halfway house that burned Monday, killing four people, because of safety problems, newly released city emails show.
The emails show that firefighters who responded to medical calls in January and February at the three-story building reported seeing dangerous conditions — trash, exposed electrical wires, a locked door to a fire escape — that posed a danger to “life safety.” They urged fire inspectors to shut down the building.
That assessment is at odds with Mayor Libby Schaaf ’s explanation after the fatal blaze for Oakland’s refusal to shut down the building immediately: She said the problems “did not amount to an imminent life safety threat.”
On Friday, she said she was “disturbed and
shocked” at the revelations in the emails, which her office released.
In one email, a Fire Department captain had told his superiors, “This building is dangerous!”
After the Ghost Ship fire in December, which killed 36 people at an unsanctioned music event that was held in an unpermitted live-work warehouse, Oakland was criticized for failing to take earlier action against that site’s owner and prime tenant.
The newly released emails show that the problems at the West Oakland halfway house were glaringly clear to the Fire Department barely a month after the Ghost Ship inferno.
The first email was sent Jan. 8 by fire Capt. Richard Chew, head of a firehouse whose crews had responded to a medical call at the halfway house at 2551 San Pablo Ave. He told Battalion Chief Geoff Hunter that firefighters had found “open piles of garbage on the third floor,” a nonworking alarm system and a fire escape door that was padlocked.
“I recommend that we consider shutting this building down immediately due to the danger to life safety,” Chew wrote.
Hunter told Chew to cut the padlock and forwarded the report to Maria Sabatini, an acting assistant fire marshal who helped oversee fire inspections. She replied in a Jan. 9 email that the building owner should “remove the trash and give a reasonable amount of time to repair the alarm system; 30 days is appropriate.”
Later that day, fire crews returned to the building and found other problems, including a lack of fire extinguishers and a fire sprinkler inlet “full of debris,” Capt. Chris Landry told Sabatini and Hunter in an email.
There is no indication in the emails that the city did anything until firefighters responded to another medical call at the San Pablo Avenue building Feb. 25. That is the day that city officials had earlier reported was the first time the Fire Department had checked the building and seen safety problems.
There were still no fire extinguishers, Lt. Steve Padgett told Sabatini, Fire Marshal Miguel Trujillo and others Feb. 25. What’s more, there were “faulty or unmaintained smoke detectors” and “storage in the hallways.”
“This building is dangerous!” Padgett wrote in an email. “Please let station 15 know what we can do to get this place shut down, updated and repaired. One possibility is to get the city attorney involved.”
Hunter then asked Sabatini when the department’s fire inspectors would get to the building. That didn’t happen until after March 18, after yet another visit by a station house crew on an “incident” call.
Lt. Frank Mui told Hunter that extension cords, including one whose insulation had apparently been gnawed away by rodents, were supplying electricity to parts of the building. There was exposed wiring and debris in the hallways, Mui reported, and still no fire extinguishers or functioning alarm system.
Hunter told Sabatini and her boss, Trujillo, that the issues reported weeks earlier “seem to be getting worse” and asked when an inspector would visit. Hunter said: “This building appears to be hazardous to both our public and our firefighters.”
Six days later, on March 24, Sabatini told Hunter that she and fire Inspector Flanoy Garrett had visited the building and given the owner “a list of deficiencies to correct. This is the beginning of a coordinated effort along with Building Services to address the issues at this location.”
The owner, Keith Joon Kim, was given 30 days to correct the problems.
Three days later, a fire accidentally started by a candle tore through the building. Two of the four people who died have been identified: Edwarn Anderson, 64, and Cassandra Robertson, 50.
More than 80 people were displaced, with many sleeping at an emergency shelter set up in the area.
As acting assistant fire marshal, Sabatini was responsible for sending inspectors to buildings whose owners aren’t complying with safety laws. Reached by phone Friday, she declined to comment.
Fire inspectors generally require a building’s owner to fix any problems within a certain time frame, but when life-threatening conditions exist, they can red-tag the property and order residents out. Schaaf has said since the Ghost Ship fire that she is reluctant to do so, fearing that low-income residents will find nowhere else to live in the city.
In an interview after the emails were released, Schaaf said she was “extremely upset and concerned by the level of urgency and the lack of coordination that the emails suggest.” But she said she had no plans to fire anybody over the incident.
She defended her statement earlier this week that the building hadn’t been blighted enough to shut down immediately, saying that was based “on information I received from professionals . ... But I am not a fire inspector.”
The mayor also characterized the references in the emails to shutting down the building as suggestions.
“We need to do much, much better,” Schaaf said. “The level of urgency, the level of professionalism, has got to go up significantly.”
As the emails were released, Schaaf and City Administrator Sabrina Landreth said they would hire six additional inspectors for the Fire Prevention Bureau, doubling its size — and then triple it with six more inspectors. “It is clear that over-demand and inadequate staffing require an immediate remedy,” they said in a statement.
An Alameda County civil grand jury found in 2014 that the Oakland Fire Department was failing to check thousands of buildings that are required to be inspected annually. Oakland records show that the San Pablo Avenue halfway house had not received a full Fire Department inspection since 2012.
Schaaf said the San Pablo Avenue and Ghost Ship fires accelerated pace of the changes she announced Friday, because “both of these fires have exposed the need for stronger leadership, staffing, training and tools.”
She blamed some of those problems on cuts in the Fire Department during the recession.
“This is part of a process of digging out, but also being very clear with our workforce about our priorities and professionalism — particularly at this time, when unscrupulous landlords are putting profit over safety,” Schaaf said.
Representatives of the Oakland Fire Department did not respond to requests for comment, some referring calls to the mayor’s office. But the head of the firefighters union said he welcomed the city’s announcement to add staff.
“We applaud the mayor’s efforts to address this serious issue, and we’ve always felt that the fire prevention bureau has been understaffed and underfunded — and in our eyes that means underprotected,” said Lt. Dan Robertson, president of the International Association of Firefighters Local 55. “The emails from our members in the firehouses speak for themselves.”
The halfway house has been owned since 1991 by Mead Avenue Housing Associates, which is run by Kim, a Piedmont entrepreneur with a colorful and controversial past. He has not responded to requests for comment.
Kim was once owner and chief executive of the nowdefunct Granny Goose potato chip company, but later filed for bankruptcy and was convicted of lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission amid a probe into insider trading.
In 2012, Kim’s building was rented by Urojas Community Services, a nonprofit founded in 1996 by the Rev. Jasper Lowery that sought to offer transitional housing and services including mental health and addiction counseling.
Before the fire, Kim was seeking to evict Urojas and its clients for failing to pay rent, but Urojas refused to leave.