Ghost Ship suits to get closed-door review

The Oakland City Council plans to review litigation brought by the families of Ghost Ship victims and survivors at a closed-session meeting in two weeks.

An agenda for the Oct. 17 council meeting says that 15 cases against the city will be considered during a session that’s not open to the public, in which monetary settlements can be determined. Thirty-six people died in the warehouse inferno last December during an electronic music party.

The city — along with Alameda County, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and other agencies — was named as a defendant in wrongfuldeath and injury suits. Warehouse owner Chor Ng and Derick Almena, the primary operator of the artist collective inside it, were also among those sued by the families. Most relatives are being represented by San Francisco attorney Mary Alexander.

Alexander and Alex Katz, a spokesman for Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker, did not immediately return requests for comment.

The complaint against the city alleged that Oakland firefighters, police officers and code inspectors failed to shut down the illegally converted warehouse in the Fruitvale neighborhood, despite knowledge of parties and dangerous conditions there.

Many of the victims of the Dec. 2 fire were trapped among the ramshackle assembly of wood, tapestries and other flammable materials on the second floor, as flames and smoke engulfed the building. All 36 died from smoke inhalation.

Investigators were not able to determine a cause for the blaze, but have pointed to fire hazards, including a makeshift stairway made of wooden pallets. Electricity was piped into the building through a single power source in an adjacent building that split into a tangle of wires that ran through the warehouse.

Separate from the civil litigation, the Alameda County district attorney’s office is pursuing criminal prosecution of Almena and the collective’s creative director, Max Harris. They entered not-guilty pleas last week.