Firefighter: Warehouse missing from fire-inspection records

SAN FRANCISCO -- The illegally occupied Oakland warehouse where dozens of partygoers perished in a blaze does not appear in a database fire inspectors use to schedule inspections and may never have been checked for fire hazards, a firefighter with knowledge of the situation said Thursday.

Oakland fire officials are supposed to inspect commercial buildings annually for fire safety, with only single-family homes and duplexes exempted, according to a city website. Officials typically pull addresses from a database to request the yearly checks, said the firefighter, who feared retribution for disclosing the information and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

"Commercial inspections are conducted as time permits during a fire station's 24-hour shift and are not routinely scheduled on an appointment basis," the city's website explains.

There's a fire station right around the corner from the warehouse, which Derick Ion Almena, a sometimes-photographer who rented the building and subleased living space to artists, had dubbed the Ghost Ship.

The victims, ranging in age from 17 to 61, died while attending a $10-a-head dance party at the warehouse.

On the campus of the University of California at Berkeley on Thursday, family members and friends hugged one another and wept as they spoke of two students, two recent graduates and a campus volunteer who died in the blaze.

"There's a part of our heart that's missing today," Michael Morris, father of 21-year-old victim Jennifer Morris, a musician and media studies major who died along with her roommate, Vanessa Plotkin, 21. Surrounded by the girl's mother, older brother and cousin, Morris fought back tears. "She was so precious to us."

The fire department and Mayor Libby Schaaf each said Thursday they could not yet say when -- or whether -- a fire inspector had examined the warehouse.

Fire department spokeswoman Rebecca Kozak said Thursday she didn't know whether the warehouse's address was in the database of buildings to be checked.

Kozak said she was processing 40 to 50 public records requests from news media, and confusion over the warehouse's address is slowing the process.

Erica Terry Derryck, Schaaf's spokeswoman, said the mayor's office was putting together "what contact all city agencies have had with this property."

At a press conference Wednesday night, Schaaf said she had requested the information from the fire department but had not yet received it. It also was disclosed then that building-department inspectors had not set foot in the warehouse since at least 1986.

A civil grand jury in a 2014 report said 4,000 out of 11,000 buildings in Oakland were going without the yearly inspections and concluded the city's website inaccurately implied all commercial buildings received annual inspections.

The department agreed with the finding. It said an annual inspection for each commercial business was a goal, but emergency responses and staffing made that more difficult.