Ghost Ship survivor is now accused
In the hours after a fire raged through the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland during an underground music show, Max Harris was cast as one of the lucky survivors.
The artist and musician described in interviews how, as the event’s doorman, he had tried in vain to save some of the 36 people who died, attacking the flames with a fire extinguisher before being quickly driven back.
Later, Harris went online to say he was struggling emotionally, and asked friends to donate money to his “personal rebuilding.”
But now the irreverent 27year-old is facing criminal charges — along with his demons — after authorities accused him of luring guests into an unsanctioned party in a dangerous building that was licensed neither as a home nor business. Its power flowed through a maze of electrical cords snaking through wood furniture and makeshift enclosures.
On Tuesday, Harris was in a Los Angeles jail awaiting his return to Alameda County, where he is charged with 36 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the Dec. 2 inferno.
While the role of the Ghost Ship’s master tenant, Derick Almena — who faces the same
charges — has been heavily scrutinized since the fire, little attention has been paid to his right-hand man, Harris, also known as Max Ohr and the Warlord of the Satya Yuga, the artist collective that occupied the warehouse.
But a more complete picture of the former art student from the East Coast has begun to emerge since his arrest. The vagabond artist’s brash photography, sculpture and jewelry, and his stick-and-poke tattoo business, made Harris comfortably at home in the anything-goes art space, and he promoted his work online as vigorously as the many events he organized on the warehouse’s second floor.
On his website, he posted flyers for earlier events at the Ghost Ship, including one that advertised “Real-live barely-legal internet music” and charged $5 at the door.
The night of the fire, Harris was collecting money from the nearly 100 people attending an upstairs electronic music show that he allegedly put together without proper permits. From his downstairs vantage point, he was one of the first to spot the flames growing on the first floor.
“I saw an orange glow coming from the back of the warehouse,” Harris told NBC’s “Today” shortly after the fire. “I immediately grabbed a fire extinguisher and I ran back. I got one squirt out of it, and I realized it wasn’t going to do anything. The roof had already caught and the flames were coming toward the door at an alarming rate.”
He was not asked about whether he shared culpability in the blaze — the deadliest fire in California since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. But investigators later focused on his alleged central role in bringing in guests.
“Harris prepared the warehouse for the event that day,” Christina Harbison, an inspector with the Alameda County district attorney’s office, wrote in court papers. “In the course of his preparation, Harris blocked off an area of the second floor that included a second stairwell, which effectively reduced the upstairs guests to a single point of escape.”
Harris moved into the space at 1305 31st Ave. in the city’s Fruitvale neighborhood in 2014 and grew into one of the visionaries behind the collective.
Before tragedy struck, he operated a tattoo parlor in the warehouse, where he manually poked his subjects with colorful designs like lotus blossoms. Harris’ own skin, including his face, became a favorite canvas.
His ever-growing personal ink work is documented on his website, which he uses to promote his craft alongside his photography, videos, music, sculptures and jewelry.
Harris grew up on the East Coast and studied at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. Reached by phone Tuesday, Harris’ mother said she would not comment.
While living at the Ghost Ship, Harris came under the tutelage of the artist Almena, 47, and his responsibilities grew. He was eventually tasked with collecting rent from the roughly 20 people living in the warehouse, and acted as the go-between for the tenants and Almena.
Almena, who was arrested Monday in Lake County, was accused with Harris of deceiving police and the Oakland Fire Department about the warehouse, where they “conducted unpermitted and uninspected construction, including electrical work,” Harbison wrote.
In interviews with reporters after the fire, Harris admitted there were no sprinklers in the building, and said the electrical system was an ongoing struggle between the residents and the building’s owner, Chor Ng, who was not charged criminally.
“Max was always saying I was making a big deal about making the place safe,” former Ghost Ship resident Shelley Mack said Tuesday. “If you are continually working against improving a place and setting up a place for calamity and you are kicking people out, how can you not expect something like this?”
Mack said voicing her frustrations about the building’s conditions prompted her ouster in February 2015.
The district attorney’s office said investigators may never know the cause of the fire, though the electrical system has been described as an area of focus. Electricity was piped into the building from a neighboring auto shop and then shared through a network of extension cords that weaved among the building’s makeshift living quarters.
“Everyone in there knew the problem with fire was because we had an illegal hookup to PG&E,” Mack said. “They all know the system was overloaded.”
Families of the 36 victims have filed lawsuits against a slew of defendants, including Harris, Almena and Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
Before his arrest, Harris had been couch-surfing with friends and updating his website and social media pages. On Dec. 28, nearly a month after the fire, he reached out to friends on Facebook, asking for donations for “personal rebuilding.”
“As much as I desire stability and the comforting environment of a work-bench,” he said, “I am also still deeply at a loss emotionally and suffering mentally and feel as though my soul needs a continued searching and the wind to my back and dust on my feet.”