Oakland fire razes empty building that lured squatters, vice
A large, smoky blaze on Friday destroyed much of a city-owned historic building in East Oakland that has long attracted squatters, had previously caught fire twice and had been a dilemma for city officials who repeatedly boarded it up.
“It looks like it’s a complete loss,” said Oakland fire Battalion Chief Dino Torres. “When I got here, the fire was shooting out of the roof.”
The fire at 1449 Miller Ave. was contained within an hour but had done significant damage to the building. The roof collapsed, and parts of the two-story building crumbled away as firefighters shot jets of water at it to put out hot spots.
People who lived and worked nearby said they had long anticipated a fire like the one that consumed the building Friday. Greg Jones, who has lived in the neighborhood for 14 years, said the structure was a known “den” for prostitutes and people using drugs.
“Believe me, city officials, police knew about this whole situation,” Jones said. “They ride by here all the time. They need to knock it down, flatten it out.”
The structure once housed an Oakland Library branch and a high school before it was abandoned in 1989 after the Loma Prieta earthquake, remaining vacant — except for squatters — ever since. In 2012, Occupy Oakland protesters took over the property, and despite the city’s efforts to
clear them out stayed and set up a community library and garden.
“They kicked us out, and we just came back,” Jaime Omar Yassin told The Chronicle in 2015. He was an outspoken member of Occupy Oakland who helped commandeer the property in 2012. “They got sick of kicking us out. And now they just pretend we’re not here.”
But after the deadly Ghost Ship fire in December 2016, the building came back on the city’s radar, and city and fire officials were under pressure to clean it up and secure it. But problems persisted. In April, the old library building aroused fire officials’ concern after the department was called there twice to put out blazes. The first fire, on April 8, was quickly extinguished on the first floor, but in the second incident two weeks later, the blaze had spread to the second floor and two firefighters were injured battling it.
When fire officials learned the city owned the building, they sent emails insisting that the site be more securely boarded up to prevent squatters from moving in or using the site for drug use or prostitution. At least one of the blazes last year was believed to have been started by squatters trying to cook or keep warm.
Sean Maher, a spokesman for the city’s Public Works Department, said Friday that after the second fire, the city erected fences around the property and boarded up and chained entry points to the building. He said city staff have regularly done drive-by inspections of the site to confirm that it remained locked up. The most recent inspection was last week.
But on Friday, neighbors said squatters continued using the building. Some told Councilman Noel Gallo, who represents the district where the structure is located, that they’d overheard a fight in the building that morning.
“It was supposed to be secure,” Chief Torres said. “That’s as far as I know.”
Torres said no one appeared to be in the building by the time firefighters arrived at the scene on Friday. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The building is a 99-yearold Spanish Colonial structure on the National Register of Historic Places. Gallo said that the city had been in the process of selling the property to a church, but that the deal had not closed yet.
Juan Carrillo, who lives about a block from the building, said he’d known that homeless people made encampments in there and he’d occasionally see police force them out. Now that the building is almost certainly going to be torn down, he said he hopes some thought is put into what replaces it.
“I hope they can put something there for the community,” he said, “like a library.”
In the meantime, Torres said he asked city Public Works officials to install new fencing around what’s left of the building to prevent people from going inside.