What a mother of a Ghost Ship fire victim, left, learned from the trial.
The testimony in the Ghost Ship trial is over and the case will soon go to the jury. I’ve shown up each day at the courtroom in Oakland as though it were my full-time job. I took a leave of absence from teaching in hopes of gleaning some insight into my daughter Chelsea Faith Dolan’s last moments.
She died in the horrific Dec. 2, 2016, warehouse fire with 35 others. Most were musicians she had known for years. They had respected each other’s work and cherished their friendships. For the last 2½ years, I’d pictured my daughter and her dear friends perishing together in the flames and smoke. My one consolation was that Chelsea was with people she loved when she died.
My hope for attending the trial was to piece together her last moments. This is not as morbid an obsession as it sounds. We all deal with grief differently; I’m the kind of person who must know the truth. Rather than imagining a thousand different nightmare scenarios, I need to know the one true sequence of events.
This is what I learned by listening carefully to each witness and taking notes on exactly what was said: Chelsea was standing outside in front of the entrance to the two-story warehouse when the fire broke out. She saw mostly residents from the first floor filing out of the building talking about a fire. None of her friends were coming out and the music from upstairs was still playing loudly. Chelsea told a woman to call 911 and ran inside to warn her friends.
I know my daughter well. She was the type of person who did what needs to be done. She had enough first-aid training to know you call 911 before attempting a rescue. She would do that. She was also the type of person who could never stand outside helplessly, knowing her friends were in danger.
Chelsea was a practical person. If no one else were warning her friends, she would do it. I can imagine her cursing out the people who were emerging from the building without telling the people upstairs that there was a fire below them. She was the type to push past them and do the job no one else was doing. Chelsea was unstoppable.
What Chelsea didn’t know was that master tenant Derrick Almena built that tinderbox inside the warehouse with no safety precautions. The fire spread intensely because it was all fuel. There was no drywall. No sprinklers to slow the fire or alarms to warn the victims. A few people escaped after she reached the second floor, but Chelsea didn’t make it back through the flames.
Three witnesses who survived the fire described Chelsea running into the burning warehouse and up the stairs. The news that my daughter had been safe outside the warehouse when the fire broke out crushed me.
Then, Almena’s attorney, Tony Serra, tried to blame Chelsea for the deaths of all 36 victims. Right after testimony that she had jostled past a witness at the top of the stairs coughing out, “The smoke. The smoke is too much,” Serra asked if maybe Chelsea had meant for him to stay upstairs. That sworn witness said she hadn’t said that, but it was possible.
Serra later brought in testimony from a witness who claimed to have seen a wild woman sitting in a wicker chair at the foot of the stairs telling the party guests to stay upstairs and die because “It was the will of the Spirit of the Forest.” With the sequence of testimony, it seemed Serra was attempting to use the fantastical story to imply that Chelsea was that woman, and she was responsible for the deaths, not his client. That’s just stupid.
There was more to come. Tyler Smith, attorney for Max Harris, whom prosecutors describe as the second in command at the warehouse, told TV cameras that the victims’ families were “finding out some things it’s not easy for them to hear, but these are the facts ...” He continued to perpetuate the lie that Chelsea was to blame by suggesting that I may have heard something about my daughter I didn’t like. What a creep.
And where was Harris when all hell exploded that night? He had time to warn the paying guests upstairs that they were in danger. Instead, he ran to his space to grab his computer and cellphone, then stood outside posting video of the fire to Instagram while 36 people burned. Shame.
On July 29, attorneys will begin giving their closing arguments. This final phase is expected to take three to four days. The jurors are expected to begin deliberation on Aug. 5. I will be present for the verdict.
I think about the fire all the time — about the 36 extraordinary young people who died unnecessarily. My waking moments are filled with daydreams about what they could have accomplished. My nights are now occupied with visions of my bold girl who wanted so badly to save her friends — and died in the attempt.
Colleen Dolan is an education therapist from San Rafael. In an earlier commentary for the Bay Area News Group, she recounts the night of the Ghost Ship warehouse fire, the wait to learn whether her daughter Chelsea Faith Dolan had perished and the days and years that followed. Chelsea, who was also known by her stage name Cherushii, grew up in the Bay Area and had become a San Francisco electronic musician and producer.