Families of Ghost Ship Fire Victims Sue Pacific Gas & Electric
HELEN CHRISTOPHI
May 17, 2017
OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) — Family members of victims of the Ghost Ship warehouse fire sued Pacific Gas & Electric on Tuesday, accusing it of failing to monitor the dangerous flow of electricity to the building they blame for causing the deadly fire in December.
The mass complaint against PG&E et al. in Alameda County Superior Court is the latest addition to a list of 20 defendants and growing the families blame for the fire that killed 36 people at an electronic dance party.
The lead defendant in the new complaint is the building owner, Chor Nar Siu Ng. Also sued are its master tenants, Derick Almena and Micah Allison, a married couple who illegally rented space in the warehouse to residents of the Satya Yuga artist’s collective, and several people who threw the concert the night the fire broke out. Several families of victims have already sued them in individual complaints.
The new complaint accuses PG&E, one of the state’s largest utilities, of acting negligently by failing to install separate electrical meters on the Ghost Ship and the buildings next to it, as required by state regulations. It also claims PG&E failed to adequately monitor the flow of power to the buildings through the single meter that had been installed.
Investigators have yet to identify the cause of the fire, but the plaintiffs in the 58-page lawsuit blame overloaded electrical lines at the back of the warehouse.
PG&E spokeswoman Tamar Sarkissian said in an email Tuesday that PG&E was not aware of anything amiss at the Ghost Ship.
“We’ve reviewed our records and over the last 10-plus years, we have no reports of electric theft or any other anomalies from this location or the adjacent premises,” Sarkissian wrote. “We’re fully cooperating with authorities as they investigate this tragic event.”
But the plaintiffs say that had PG&E inspected the meter, “as a reasonably prudent utility would have, they would have observed and identified the hazardous and out-of-code conditions within the electrical distribution system which led to the deadly fire.” This would have triggered an inspection and a fix before the fire could happen, the plaintiffs say.
They also sued, for the first time, Benjamin Cannon, an unlicensed contractor whom Almena hired in 2014 to do electrical work on the building after a transformer fire. In an invoice to the building owner, Ng, Cannon said the fire had likely been caused by “catastrophically overloading” the power system, according to the complaint.
Cannon charged Ng for $32,000 in unpermitted electrical work to replace the burnt-out transformer and recommended $15,000 in electrical upgrades to “get the whole building into a safe state,” the complaint states.
He also told Ng that the building needed a second transformer to replace one that had survived the fire but was “too small for the loads on it as well.” It was never installed, according to the complaint.
The 10,000-square-foot building had only two escape routes: a makeshift stairway at the front made of pallets and scrap wood, and a staircase at the back that was hidden behind a stage.
There were no sprinklers, fire alarms or fire extinguishers, and no emergency exits, according to the complaint.
The Ghost Ship’s power was supplied from an auto shop next door via a cable snaked through a hole in the wall, and extension cords and cables were strewn around the building.
“There were often sparks from the electrical system that smelled and circuit breakers blew out often,” the complaint states.
The plaintiffs are represented by Mary Alexander, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
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First Lawsuits Filed Over Oakland Warehouse Fire
HELEN CHRISTOPHI
December 27, 2016
OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) – The families of two victims who died in a massive fire at a warehouse in Oakland earlier this month have sued a slew of individuals, including the building’s owner and its master tenants, in the first civil lawsuits filed over the fire that killed 36 people attending an electronic music show at the warehouse.
In twin complaints filed in Alameda County Superior Court late Friday, the parents of victims Michela Gregory, 20, and Griffin Madden, 23, accused eight individuals of negligence, negligent failure to evict, premises liability and wrongful death, for allowing artists to use the warehouse as a live/work space and musicians to throw concerts there despite being zoned only for industrial use.
Named defendants include Chor Ng, the Ghost Ship’s owner, and her daughter Eva Ng; master tenants Derick Ion Almena and Micah Allison, a married couple who lived in the warehouse with their three children and who sub-leased space to other tenants; Daniel Lopez and Omar Vega, who supplied electricity to the Ghost Ship from their auto shop next door through a hole in the wall; Joel Shanahan, who hosted the concert, and John Hrabko, the concert’s promoter.
The Gregorys and Maddens also filed claims against the city of Oakland and Alameda County, the first step in suing a government agency.
“Their contribution was a horrific tragedy,” Mary Alexander, an attorney for the two families, said in an interview Tuesday. “This was a death trap once the fire broke out and people couldn’t escape.”
In their 26-page lawsuits, the families claim Michela and Griffin, who were both attending the concert at the Ghost Shift the night it went up in flames, “suffered many minutes before they died.” The lawsuits do not give a cause of death.
According to the Gregory suit, the Alameda County Coroner’s bureau found Michela’s body in the arms of her boyfriend, Alex Vega. He had been trying to shield Michela from the flames.
The families describe the interior of the warehouse as a maze of “makeshift” rooms cluttered with flammable materials like art supplies and propane tanks, and at least one RV.
They say the 10,000-square-foot building had only two escape routes: a makeshift stairway at the front of the building made of pallets and scrap wood, and a staircase at the back of the building that was hidden behind a stage.
There were no sprinklers, fire alarms or fire extinguishers, and no emergency exits, according to the complaint.
Although the cause of the fire hasn’t been identified, the complaints cite a dangerous and overloaded electrical system as a likely culprit. The Ghost Ship’s power was supplied from the auto shop next door via a cable snaked through a hole in the wall, and extension cords and cables were strewn around the building. The electrical system threw off sparks and the circuit breakers blew out regularly. Unlicensed contractors, including Almena, had installed electrical boxes at the warehouse, the families say.
The Dec. 2 inferno that quickly engulfed the Ghost Ship wasn’t the first fire to break out in the building, the families say. A day earlier, a refrigerator ignited and the fire was put out by residents.
People had warned Almena that the Ghost Ship was a “death trap” and told him to buy fire extinguishers, according to the complaints.
Asked Tuesday whether all eight defendants could be held equally liable for Michela and Griffin’s deaths, Alexander said only a building’s owner is responsible for ensuring a building’s safety. But she emphasized that Hrabko and Shanahan had invited more than 100 people to the Ghost Ship the night it burned down despite the its safety hazards.
“That number of people not having a safe way to escape is just reprehensible,” she said.
Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley announced a criminal investigation into the fire earlier this month that could bring charges of manslaughter or murder. Her office has yet to file any charges.
The Gregorys and Maddens also say Oakland and Alameda County are liable for their children’s deaths. In their claims against the city, they say the Oakland fire and police departments and the planning and building department knew people lived at the Ghost Ship illegally but didn’t shut it down.
And despite media reports that the fire department never inspected the Ghost Ship, they say fire department employees held a concert there before the blaze.
“Therefore, it was well known to the city the illegal use and dangerous condition of the warehouse,” they say in the claims.
A representative for the Oakland City Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Alexander acknowledged that it will be difficult to sue the city and county given a California law that immunizes public entities from such claims.
“There are immunities for governments but it’s not insurmountable,” she said. “You have to try to show that they not only failed to act but they acted with negligence not to warn the public. It’s just horrific that this place was allowed to exist and a fire broke out and people were trapped.”
Michela, a student at San Francisco State University, had been studying child development when she died. Griffin, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, was studying philosophy, Slavic languages and literature.
“It’s important that this doesn’t happen again,” Alexander said. “People need to be protected.”
The families seek general, special and punitive damages. They’re represented by Alexander, Jennifer Fiore and Sophia Aslami of Mary Alexander & Associates in San Francisco.
Almena is represented by Tony Serra of Pier 5 Law Offices, also in San Francisco. He did not return a request for comment.