An early morning blaze Friday chased eight people out of an Oakland warehouse, a space that was evacuated and condemned twice this year by Oakland fire officials.
At least six of the people who fled the flames were living in the warehouse illegally, sneaking in after the building was red-tagged on Nov. 28, officials said. The space was red-tagged in April as well, after fire officials found the owner needed to install sprinklers, extinguishers and alarm systems to bring the building up to safety standards.
“It was under deplorable conditions,” Assistant Fire Marshal Emmanuel Watson said of the warehouse, located at 3855 West St. near the MacArthur BART Station.
At about 2:30 a.m., fire crews attacked the blaze with four engines, two trucks and a total of 27 responders. One woman suffered minor burns and was hospitalized. No firefighters were injured.
Watson described a scene chillingly familiar to the 2016 Ghost Ship inferno, where 36 people in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood were trapped and killed in a warehouse illegally repurposed as living quarters for artists. The space, which was also used for storage, was littered with large furniture and debris and was split into several small rooms.
Watson, however, noted one big difference between Ghost Ship and the space that went up in flames Friday.
“It sounds like it was (similar), but it wasn’t,” he said. “Because this one was on our radar.”
After the initial April red-tagging, fire officials gave the owner five months to bring the space up to code and said no one could live there in the meantime, Watson said. After a review in August, fire officials determined the building was still not up to compliance.
A fire crew was called to the warehouse for a medical issue in October, which prompted another probe. The building was red-tagged again the following month, and about 20 occupants were ordered to evacuate within 72 hours. Watson said the occupants were offered assistance in finding housing, and that the city shut off the building’s electricity and utilities.
It’s unclear whether the occupants on Friday were the same ordered to leave last month. Watson said the owner lived in the building at one point as well.
The cause and origin of Friday’s fire are under investigation.
A major structural collapse occurred inside the warehouse, Watson said. The city will soon board up the building and put a fence around it, and it’s extremely unsafe for anyone to go inside.
“At one point, you should not have been in,” Watson said. “Now there’s a possibility that the building will fall on you.”
Megan Cassidy is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @meganrcassidy
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