The investigation into the Ghost Ship warehouse fire that killed 36 people in Oakland has come up with one disturbing revelation: The city’s fire chief says the rickety fire trap was never inspected by her department.
“Right now, I can say we do not have any record stating that our firefighters had made entry or were aware of what was going on at 1315 31st Avenue,” Ms. Teresa Deloach Reed said at a news conference Tuesday.
The New York Times reports records show that Oakland’s department remains understaffed, even though the city has budgeted for empty positions to be filled. A city report from October showed that while the Oakland Police Department had only two vacancies, the Fire Department had 63. So there may have been too few fire inspectors available to inspect even obvious fire traps such as the Ghost Ship warehouse.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/us/the-oakland-fire-what-we-know-about-building-inspections-and-the-neighborhood.html?hp=undefined&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
