Criminal case is just a start

The Alameda County district attorney’s office has charged the Ghost Ship warehouse’s master tenant, Derick Almena, and its creative director, Max Harris, with multiple felony counts of involuntary manslaughter in December’s tragic, deadly fire.

While manslaughter charges for fatal, non-arson fires are rare, the situation that led up to the Ghost Ship fire was a special instance of extreme negligence.

Thirty-six partygoers died in a maze-like warehouse that many people knew was unsafe. There were numerous neighbor complaints about the building, which had a long list of fire code violations. There were years of lies and deceptions about whether people were living there.

So the district attorney’s office is right to issue criminal charges in this case. But responsibility and accountability must go beyond Almena and Harris.

Building owners, like Ghost Ship’s Chor Ng, need to take responsibility for knowing what’s happening in their properties. (Several families have filed civil lawsuits against Ng.) City officials need to work with them and their tenants to ensure that both spaces and tenants are safe.

The Oakland Fire Department has rightly come in for a tremendous amount of criticism since the Ghost Ship fire. That criticism continued after a terrible March fire in a halfway house on San Pablo Avenue that led to four deaths and six injuries.

While the former fire chief, Teresa Deloach Reed, wisely retired in May, Oakland has yet to hire a new permanent chief who might be able to lead the department through a necessary period of reform and renewal. It’s not just the Fire Department that’s responsible for safety, however.

Other city administrators and agencies need to focus on how their policies are impacting Oakland’s problems. For example, Oakland’s many homeless encampments are an obvious source of fire danger.

There have been multiple fires in homeless camps over the past several months. If the pattern continues, it’s only a matter of time before fatalities result. Yet because the encampments aren’t considered formal structures, they don’t receive inspections. But danger is danger, and something’s got to change.