City failed to inspect the Oakland warehouse for 30 years

Oakland city and its taxpayer might be responsible for the Ghost Ship fire, because the city forgot to inspect the Oakland warehouse for 30 years.

We should have more regulations specifying what our government should do. If government missed its own duty, taxpayer can sue the government and put the government in prison if it is a criminal case.

“Oakland fire officials are supposed to annually inspect commercial buildings 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 sub-leased living space to artists, had dubbed the Ghost Ship”

http://www.wsbradio.com/ap/ap/general/investigators-to-look-at-electrical-system-in-oakl/ntK5Y/

Santa Clara definitely does annual fire inspections on commercial property. If you’re lucky, they lose the paperwork and inspect you twice.

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Do they charge an inspection fee for annual fire inspection? Hope they won’t charge the double amount when they lose paperwork.

There are many illegal inlaw units in SF and Oakland. I heard a case that the city found out about one illegal inlaw units and issued a notice for building code violation and require the demolition of the illegal inlaw. However, they refuse to issue a notice to declare the building as uninhabitable in order to prevent the tenants from being evicted. That created a delimma for the owner. On one hand, he had to remove the inlaw unit. On the other hand, the tenant lives there and protected by the just cause eviction law. They want conflicting results: they want a demolition of the illegal inlaw but they also want to prevent the tenant being evicted from the inlaw. If a fire broke out, will the city be responsible for failing to remove tenants from non-safe building?

Numerous conflicting regulations drive people to crazy. They create numerous conflicting regulations to endanger the people, but they often leave the government entity from these burdens.

We need to reduce the regulations by 50%, reduce the politicians by 50%.

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Support :triumph:

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It’s part of the annual business tax/license. You only have to pay that once.

Speaking of regulations. The way I read this is that all landlords have replace all smoke detectors with the new 10 year ones at $20 each…I used get the old ones for $4 each…Figure an average of 5 per house…A boondoggle for the smoke detector makers…

Most people are still using the old style smoke detectors. Essentially most homeowners are breaking this new regulations

But is it only a problem for landlord? If a homeowner has no smoke detector and has family member die in the fire, he won’t have any liability (still heartbroken of course). A landlord will face grave consequences. Can the regulations or the lease make this a responsibility of tenants?

If the owner or tenant of the Ghost Ship paid the annual business tax, and Oakland city failed to perform the annual fire inspection, is it called gross negligence? It feels that Oakand taxpayers are in big trouble due to the negligence of their public servants.

There is already reports that fire department tried to blame that they never received a complaint when the annual inspection does not require any complaint.

Costco sells smoke alarms for $10-$15 depending on rebate. Not particularly burdensome. That’s like two haircuts from manch

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Special discount for bald men. :slight_smile:

The law says the landlord is responsible. Can not make the tenant responsible…That means all you landlords are in violation of the law if you don’t have and maintain the lastest detectors …

The cheapest 10 year battery Smoke detectors I have found is Wallmart… $15…