Building owners knew of electrical issues
Emails bolster possible criminal case against landlords
OAKLAND — More than two years before December’s Ghost Ship fire claimed 36 lives, the building’s owners knew of dangerous electrical problems there — including a transformer fire in an adjacent space never reported to authorities — and learned that tenants had installed power upgrades without city permits, according to emails obtained by this news organization. But they resisted efforts to fix the problems.
“The lack of electrical infrastructure was made very clear before your lease began,” Kai Ng, the son of building owner Chor Ng, wrote in a Feb. 15, 2015, email to Derick Almena, who ran the artists’ cooperative in the illegally converted Ghost Ship warehouse, subletting space to artists who lived there.
Two days earlier, Almena had told Kai Ng that electricity flowed to the arts collective and adjoining businesses within the block of buildings the Ngs owned through “ancient and violated lines of distribution” that were “in dire need of a total and immediate upgrade.” Chor Ng has owned the building, a former milk bottling plant, for more than 25 years.
With the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office considering criminal charges in the deadly fire, the cache of emails provides the first public indication that the building’s owners were aware of dangerous electrical issues there. Experts say the evidence could do much to bolster a possible criminal case against the landlords.
The revelations about what the Ngs knew “clearly strengthens an involuntary manslaughter charge and also makes second-degree murder (charges) more plausible,” said Stanford Law School professor Robert Weisberg.
“They were on notice that there was problems with the electricity,” said Mary Alexander, an attorney representing victim families. “The owner has the absolute duty to make sure any electrical work is done safely and properly.”
Although investigators have not officially announced the cause of the tragic fire, sources have told this news organization it is blamed on an overloaded electrical system.
Kai Ng and his sister, Eva, who act as property managers for their mother, did not return repeated messages. A lawyer representing the family, Stephen Dreher, declined to comment.
The February 2015 email exchange between Kai Ng and Almena was not the first alert the Ngs received about the inadequate electrical system in their buildings on the 1300 block of 31st Avenue.
An invoice for electrical work by former tenant Ben Cannon, an unlicensed contractor, sent to Kai and Eva Ng shows that the landlords were made aware of an unreported small electrical fire in the adjoining auto body shop in 2014 likely caused by a “catastrophically overloading” power system, emails show. Cannon subleased space from the auto body shop.
Power flowed into the Ng properties from a PG&E utility pole to a transformer in a crawl space above a cellphone store on the corner of 31st Avenue and International Boulevard. The electricity traveled to a second transformer in the back of the auto body shop next to the Ghost Ship. From there, wires took electricity through a hole in the wall and into the artists’ collective. One electrical meter served all three Ng-owned locations.
“We need a second transformer because the building is split in half power wise, I’ve already replaced that first transformer (we had no power when it went up in flames), but the second one is too small for the loads on it as well,” Cannon wrote in an email to Kai Ng in January 2015.
That second transformer was never replaced, according to a number of former Ghost Ship residents. Cannon proposed installing a less-expensive transformer that would be used “a little bit differently than standard,” he wrote.
State records show Cannon’s last contractor’s license expired in 2008. He does not have a state certificate to do electrical work, according to the California Department of Industrial Relations.
Cannon denied in an email having done “any work in the Ghost Ship building itself” but would not discuss what he did in the adjoining businesses. He declined to comment further, citing pending litigation. Court records show that Cannon is not named as a defendant in a slew of wrongful death lawsuits over the deadly Dec. 2 fire. The District Attorney’s Office is investigating Cannon as part of its probe, sources said. Its spokeswoman, Teresa Drenick, declined to comment.
But Cannon wasn’t the only person who worked on the Ng’s electrical system before the 2014 transformer fire. Robert “Jake” Jacobitz, a former Ghost Ship tenant, said in December that he performed electrical work inside the arts collective before Cannon replaced the ruined transformer in the auto body shop. Jacobitz is not listed as having an electrician certificate, according to state records.
In a series of tenant emails over a nearly twoyear period, the Ngs were alerted to code violations in the adjoining buildings, and emails reveal they knew of work Cannon did that Oakland Planning Department records show was not permitted.
And just two months before the December blaze, Ghost Ship resident Max Harris emailed Eva and Kai Ng more warnings about “overexertion” on the electrical system.
Harris said they blew off his concerns. “Kai Ng totally sidestepped my expression of needing stability,” he said in a phone interview. “I said it was terminal and was getting worse, and he just asked for more money.”
A fire and explosion investigator said it is clear the work Cannon described in the emails and invoice should have been attempted only by a licensed electrical contractor who first obtained the proper permits.
“It would be negligent to perform such work without engaging a licensed contractor and a certified electrician in the State of California,” Dan Rapperport, the forensic fire expert and president of a Massachusetts-based firm who reviewed the emails and invoice for this news organization, wrote in an email.
The 36 victims were attending an electronic dance party on the second floor of the labyrinth-like collective when they were overcome by thick, black smoke. Investigators quickly focused on the building’s electrical system — a spider web of breaker boxes, extension cords and transformers — as the possible cause of the fire.
Earlier electrical fire
In late 2014, about a year after Almena signed a lease for the warehouse, a transformer burned up inside the auto body shop and the power was shut off. No one called 911. Cannon soon began repairing the electrical system, records show.
He found that the three businesses — the cellphone store, the auto body shop and the Ghost Ship — had been placed on a single 7.5kilovolt transformer meant for lighting, and that it had been overloaded, according to an invoice he sent to Ghost Ship residents and property manager Kai Ng.
In that invoice, Cannon wrote that he found that subpanels – also known as breaker boxes — were improperly installed with no grounding, and “deferred maintenance dating back decades requiring immediate intervention to avoid additional fires ... every piece of wire downstream of main panel (was) improperly installed, illegal and dangerous.” Cannon installed a 25kilovolt-amp transformer, breakers, distribution panels, conduits and cable boxes, documents show, and later asked the Ngs to pay for it.
On his own, Cannon purchased an electrical transformer that he installed in his subleased unit, said Troy Altieri, who worked on projects for Almena and Cannon as a handyman. Almena declined to comment for this story.
Altieri said the new transformer bypassed the burned-out one in the auto body shop. On Dec. 3, 2014, Cannon submitted the $32,000 invoice to the Ngs for the work, which the landlords said was unauthorized and refused to pay, according to multiple sources.
Fire investigators probing the deadly fire were interested in the burned-out transformer and the one Cannon installed to replace it, according to former resident Darold Leite, who escorted U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms personnel through the charred remains.
More upgrades
In January 2015, Cannon wrote to Kai Ng about the dangerous electrical infrastructure in the buildings that he had not yet upgraded, including the “tiny” transformer in the crawl space above the cellphone store. Cannon wrote that it could not handle the electrical load.
He described existing subpanels and other wiring in the crawl space as “grossly unsafe,” and recommended an additional $15,000 in electrical upgrades to “get the whole building into a safe state.”
When Kai Ng balked at the costs, Cannon reassured him it was necessary and that he’d found a cheap transformer.
In the end, Cannon’s proposed work was never completed, several former tenants said, and the Ngs blamed Almena and others for the electrical issues, claiming they had work done without their permission.
“You made unilateral decisions on the electricity and wanted compensation after the fact,” Kai Ng wrote in a Feb. 15, 2015, email to Almena.
Altieri reflected on the safety and building codes that could have saved lives on the night of Dec. 2.
“My whole life, codes were a pain to me,” Altieri said. “I didn’t appreciate the codes until now, after this tragedy.” Contact Aaron Davis at 408859-5105, Matthias Gafni at 925-952-5026, Thomas Peele at 510-208-6458 and David DeBolt at 510-208-6453.