Ghost Ship fire parents: ‘This is our therapy’
Their daily time together has created a bond that has helped them ‘function’
OAKLAND >> Colleen Dolan collapsed in the courthouse lobby. She leaned against the wall next to the elevators at first, but then dropped straight to the floor and wept.
She had spent the morning in the Oakland courtroom listening to a witness testify about the final minutes of the Ghost Ship warehouse fire that claimed the lives of 36 people trapped inside, and about the young blond woman who had made it out of the inferno alive only to race back inside to try to save her friends.
Not until the break, when Dolan locked eyes with the witness in the lobby, did she know for certain: the young blond woman was her 33-year-old daughter, Chelsea, a guest DJ filling in for a friend that night. She had survived only to die.
As Dolan fell that morning in late May, two, four, six others rushed to her — the parents and a fiancee of loved ones who also perished in the Dec. 2, 2016, blaze. And here they were — this band of bereaved — on the cold, hard terrazzo floor, sitting protectively around one of their own.
“These beautiful people held me up and helped me back in,” said Dolan, recounting her moment of despair. “They were my pillars of strength.”
The trial is wrapping up af
ter 2½ months. Since it began in late April, the family members of about a dozen victims — the ones who live close enough to attend the trial in downtown Oakland nearly every day — have forged a bond so strong, many consider their daily time together a form of grief counseling.
“This is our therapy. This is real,” said David Gregory, whose 20-year-old daughter, Michela, died in her boyfriend’s arms in the fire. Standing outside the courtroom, Gregory put his arm around Dolan’s shoulders.
“I don’t think I’d come every day if you weren’t here,” he told her. “I look forward to seeing everybody — and being understood.”
They understand why, for weeks after the fire, Gregory pretended his daughter was away at San Francisco State and Dolan imagined her daughter was enjoying another extended music trip to Berlin.
“You love them too much to let them go suddenly,” Dolan said.
They know why Ivania Chavarria never answers her phone anymore — the last time she did she was told her son was dead. And they understand why five of them carry to court each day ashes of their children.
It’s been 2½ years since the Ghost Ship warehouse burned down, killing three dozen young artists, musicians and partygoers who were trapped on the second floor when the power went out and the fire swept through and blocked the ramshackle staircase with flames. Two men — Derick Almena, who leased the building and created an elaborate, wood-filled art space, and Max Harris, who called himself its “creative director” and collected rent from the nearly two dozen people who lived there illegally — are charged with 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter. They have testified that they are sorry but not criminally responsible. All but one of the dead were party guests.
The families have vague recollections of one another in the desperate hours after the fire, waiting for news that chilly Saturday morning in a sheriff’s substation a few blocks away.
Some met at the one-year anniversary commemoration at the Oakland Museum of California when bells chimed 36 times. And many finally connected at the courthouse in August, when they were summoned for a hearing on an ill-fated plea deal to speak in open court, one by one, about their loss and who they held to blame.
It was a wrenching moment for the parents, but an empowering one, too. After listening to two days of family anguish, Judge James Cramer — in a stunning move — rejected the planned plea deal that would have sent Almena to prison for nine years and Harris for six. Instead, saying Almena, in particular, didn’t appear sufficiently remorseful, he sent the case to trial — and that’s when the parents and loved ones began calling themselves “family friends.”
“It was only after we got to know each other’s stories that we started to cling to each other,” Dolan said. “It was so isolating when we had no one to talk to. When we were alone, it was devastating.”
Being together, Chavarria said, “is the only way we can function.”
It isn’t always easy at home. Maria Vega’s husband, Manuel, gets emotional when she mentions the trial, she said, “so I don’t say anything.”
Chavarria says if she told her 95-year-old mother all the details she wants to share, “she would probably die.”
And Dolan doesn’t want to dampen the joy of her second daughter, who recently married. “This is no time for me to be pulling her down.”
So they sit together in the first three rows of the courtroom each day, where they squeeze each other’s hands when they hear their children’s names mentioned and listen to testimony that Chavarria says “makes you shiver inside.”
Gregory usually sits next to the window, setting his leather-bound journal on the sill when he gets too angry or upset to take notes and crosses his arms instead. He works the overnight shift as a mechanic at the San Mateo County Transit District, and after court each day, he goes home to sleep for four hours before he heads to work at 11 p.m.
Dolan usually takes one of the hard wooden seats in the middle. She takes detailed notes for daily updates to her Facebook page and keeps a photo of her daughter tucked inside: “I see her eyes throughout the testimony,” she said, “and she reminds me to catch every word and tell her story, the whole story.”
Filling in the other seats are Maria Vega, whose 22-year-old son, Alex, died holding his girlfriend, Michela Gregory; Chavarria, whose 32-year-old son, Chase “Nex Iuguolo” Wittenauer, had given up his IT job to pursue a career as a musician; and Susan and Keith Slocum, whose daughter Donna Kellogg was an energetic redhead who worked at a Berkeley cafe. Farzaneh Hoda, who
lost her 30-year-old daughter, Sara — an elementary school teacher and artist — often sits near the aisle, and Grace Lovio, who was studying human rights in Paris when the fire killed her fiance, Jason Mccarty, takes a seat nearby.
Other relatives near and far come when they can, including Grace Kim from Washington, D.C., whose cousin Ara Jo was killed, and Carol Cidlik from Hawaii, who took the witness stand on the first day of testimony and tearfully read the final text from her daughter Nicole Renae Siegrist: “I’m gonna die now.”
The family members eat lunch together nearly every day and have become so close that they have gathered for a Saturday night dinner at one of their homes, and picked up outof-state family members flying in for the trial and hosted them overnight.
And nearly everyone carries some kind of talisman, memento or relic to court each day to hold the memories of their loved ones close: necklaces their daughters were wearing the night they died, a charm with their name, a tattoo of their face. Pieces of jewelry carry small vials of ashes.
The Alameda County district attorney opened a private conference room for the families with a pot of strong coffee and sugar packets so they can spend breaks away from lingering witnesses and reporters.
Last week, they brought back sandwiches from a local deli and sat down in plastic chairs at folding tables. It is here they can express their daily frustrations and grief — like on the days they felt Harris showed no remorse or Almena blamed others or when the pathologist took the stand and explained in haunting detail how their children died, that they were starving for air, that they were disoriented, nauseous and panicked. The day Hoda and Susan Slocum found out their daughters’ bodies were discovered in an embrace, it is here they found sanctuary.
“In this room, you and I fell into each other’s arms,” Slocum told Hoda. “It’s horrifying but comforting.”
Tears well up in Hoda’s eyes: “She at least had someone at the last moment.”
They don’t always agree — like whether prosecutors should show jurors pictures of the bodies of their children. But they understand each other in ways that others can’t — and they find solidarity in small acts of protest.
On a recent day after court, they noticed small “Free Max” stickers that Harris’ supporters had posted to a light pole outside the courthouse.
“Garbage,” Dolan said. They peeled them off one by one.
When the trial is over, they have pledged to stay in touch. If the outcome goes their way and the men are convicted, they are talking about taking a dinner cruise together or visiting Cidlik in Hawaii.
Either way, a civil lawsuit will keep them connected as will plans to build a permanent memorial at the Ghost Ship warehouse, where the roof caved in but the exterior walls still stand. The smell of burnt timber still lingers in the air.
One day last week, they were ordering lunch when Cidlik talked about how many of their children were friends, or knew of one another through Oakland’s vibrant arts community.
“They liked each other,” she said, “and we like each other.”
But it’s more than that, she said. “It’s my family now, if they claim me.”
In an instant, Dolan replied: “You’ve been claimed already.”