Burned Oakland Warehouse Not Inspected By Fire Department In At Least 10 Years
OAKLAND (KCBS) – There is no record of any fire inspection of the Ghost Ship warehouse that was gutted by flames last Friday, killing 36 people, in at least 10 years, sources within the Oakland Fire Department tell KCBS.
The property on 31st Avenue does not appear in the department's database of 12,000 buildings that are required by law to be inspected every year.
• Continuing Coverage: Deadly Oakland Warehouse Fire
That database was created in 2006. A source said it is possible the building was inspected informally, and the information never entered in the system, but that is unlikely, and there's no record that it was.
Fire Station 13 is less than two blocks away from the warehouse. Firefighters do conduct routine inspections between emergency calls, but only of buildings that are in the database that they are assigned to visit.
Interim Planning and Building Department Director Darin Ranelletti made the startling admission at a news conference Wednesday that none of his department's inspectors had been inside the doomed building in at least 30 years, even though they'd visited the property repeatedly to investigate complaints.
But city officials have been unable to say when the last routine fire safety inspection was, or produce any records of such a search. That's because there aren't any, at least for the last decade.