Being a reporter often means trying to become an expert on a complicated subject in a short period of time. For the investigation into the warehouse fire, I’ve spent the past few days trying to get up to speed on the Oakland Fire Department and the city’s multiple inspection processes.  In the course of reporting, it has become clear that the department faces a number of challenges when it comes to keeping the city safe from fires.  According to several officials who know the department well, Oakland went more than three years without a fire marshal. Records also show that the department remains understaffed, even though the city has budgeted for empty positions to be filled. A city report from October showed that while the Oakland Police Department had only two vacancies, the Fire Department had 63.  Asked about the vacancies, Ms. Deloach Reed said at a news conference that when she took over the department, she realized that the Fire Prevention Bureau “needed better oversight and supervision.” But she did not explain why dozens of jobs remained unfilled.  Ms. Deloach Reed has not agreed to an interview, but we have learned a few things about her tenure. In 2014, she responded to an Alameda County civil grand jury’s investigation of deficiencies in the department’s inspection bureau with an 11-page letter acknowledging that “many of its findings were accurate and that the Fire Department was ‘working diligently’ to correct the problems — including improving its revenue collections and filling jobs that had been frozen or eliminated because of budget cuts,” The San Francisco Chronicle reported.  In 2015, The Mercury News reported, “The Oakland Fire Department for years has filled staffing shortages by spending millions on overtime for existing employees, rather than hiring more firefighters and paramedics” — a situation that union leaders said was dangerous.  Zac Unger, the vice president of Local 55, the Oakland firefighters union, told me the Fire Department was understaffed, with only a handful of inspectors responsible for many buildings. “A comparable city of our size would have two to three times that,” he said.  Ms. Deloach Reed said on Tuesday that eight fire code inspectors were tasked with annually inspecting about 1,800 buildings. She added that firefighters inspected commercial businesses, but that checking seemingly empty warehouses was not part of their duties.  But a search of the database of the city’s Business Tax Office shows that the owner of the Ghost Ship warehouse, Chor Nar Siu Ng, has a business license for the property, and the Oakland fire inspection services website says all “commercial facilities” must be inspected at least once a year. The question now: Does Ms. Ng’s license mean her warehouse should have been inspected regularly?  To try to get a better sense of how the department is run, I spoke with Darryl Von Raesfeld, the former chief of the San Jose Fire Department, who worked closely with Ms. Deloach Reed for 25 years, including when she was assistant fire chief there. Mr. Raesfeld described Ms. Deloach Reed as “very professional.” But he also said that during his tenure, he made sure his department was properly staffed.  I also put a call in to the State Fire Marshal’s office in the hopes of understanding California’s regulations for inspections of warehouses, to get a sense of how often the Ghost Ship should have been inspected.  Scott McLean, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said the state mandated fire inspections for only four types of structures: public and private schools, high-rise buildings, residential buildings (like hotels, apartment homes and dormitories), and jails and other detention centers. He said different jurisdictions might have requirements for places like warehouses, but those rules do not come from the state.  An Oakland councilwoman, Rebecca Kaplan, said fire inspection assignments were not doled out by street. “They are assigned hither and yon in no particular order down the street,” she said.  A warehouse owner and a longtime warehouse resident told me that inspections often happened only because owners requested them or because of complaints. It appears, from what we know now, that the Oakland Planning and Building Department had not had an inspector inside the Ghost Ship in the past 30 years.  There is a database kept by the city’s Fire Prevention Bureau that is supposed to be used to make sure each building is regularly inspected. But Ms. Deloach Reed indicated Tuesday that the Ghost Ship was not in that database.  A former Oakland fire inspector who spoke on the condition of anonymity told me that the Ghost Ship would not be the first building not to show up in the database.  Another angle that remains unclear is the relationship between the Oakland Planning and Building Department code inspectors and the fire inspectors. From my understanding, city code inspectors often focus on structures that are under construction and on keeping places free of blight, while fire code inspectors focus on prevention by enforcing requirements for sprinklers and fire alarms. In other cities, like San Jose, the two work closely together. Is that the case in Oakland?  Asa Dodsworth, 36, a member of an art collective, was supposed to be at the Ghost Ship party that night, but he arrived when the warehouse was already in flames. Mr. Dodsworth said he was racked with guilt because his collective had thrown two parties at the Ghost Ship in the past year and a half. He said he had been so worried about the building being at risk that he offered in early 2015 to buy Derick Ion Almena, the master tenant, fire extinguishers.  But Mr. Almena rebuffed the offer, according to Mr. Dodsworth. Mr. Almena has not returned requests for comment.  Ms. Deloach Reed has said there were at least two fire extinguishers in the Ghost Ship.  WHAT’S NEXT? I’d like to talk to any former or current inspectors who work either in the Oakland Planning and Building Department or for the Oakland Fire Department’s Fire Prevention Bureau. And I’m eager to interview any current or former firefighters who know how the department works.  I would also like to talk to any people who were at the party at the Ghost Ship, and to any firefighters who fought the fire.  The back streets of Fruitvale are stacked with piles of soggy garbage, the ever-present reminders of a trash-dumping epidemic that city officials have failed to tackle. Next to vacant lots and car body repair shops live women like Paula Gaines, who sleeps in a trailer without any car to pull it, with a single green candle as her only source of light. Ms. Gaines had a stroke a year ago, leaving her right hand unusable and twisted back at the wrist, and the fingers of her left hand swollen to twice their normal size.  These were my first encounters during a walking tour of Fruitvale, a neighborhood now well known for being the site of the Ghost Ship fire. But two weeks ago, before the fire, residents here might have told you that the biggest problems were robberies, car break-ins, homelessness, trash dumping, near-nightly shootings and prostitution on International Boulevard.  To understand the context of the fire, I reached out to Jose Ortiz, a longtime resident of Fruitvale who spends part of every weekend picking up trash and dead dogs. He would frequently pick up garbage in front of the Ghost Ship warehouse, he said.  Mr. Ortiz spent two decades working as a community liaison officer for the Police and Fire Departments and exudes a passion for the place, but he is wary, too. “The houses are falling down, the fences are collapsing,” he said. “The residents are afraid to go to City Hall for permits because they know it will be a nightmare.”  Mistrust of authority was a recurring theme. Mr. Ortiz said several times that Oakland City Hall was incredibly difficult. “People don’t trust the inspectors, and they don’t trust the city,” he said. “They do things behind their back because they know that dealing with the city is a nightmare.”  As we were walking, Mr. Ortiz’s phone rang. It was a former mayor of Oakland, Elihu Harris. Mr. Ortiz handed me the phone.  “The fire was a symptom, not a disease,” Mr. Harris said. “I’m glad people are paying attention to it, but we need to go back to the core problems.” He mentioned crime and the housing crisis.  Walking on International Boulevard, Mr. Ortiz pointed to a restaurant where he said Guatemalan immigrants worked and slept in primitive conditions. He said he had called city inspectors but gotten no results.  When we arrived at the site of the Ghost Ship, federal investigators were on the scene. Noel Gallo, the Oakland councilman representing Fruitvale, was standing on the sidewalk.  Mr. Gallo was born and raised in Fruitvale and still lives in the neighborhood.  “Oakland’s challenge is enforcement,” he said. “We don’t need more laws.”  He enumerated problems, pointing down Fruitvale Avenue, where homeless seniors live in their cars. Fruitvale is largely Latino, including newly arrived immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador, he said. They get paid in cash, making them a target for robberies, Mr. Gallo said.  As we were talking, an elderly man, Alberto Huizar, approached us.  “Hey! Cómo está, señor?” Mr. Gallo greeted him.  Mr. Gallo explained that he had met Mr. Huizar a month ago to discuss a robbery.  “It was a nice, sunny afternoon,” Mr. Gallo said. “Two men robbed him at gunpoint.”  Mr. Huizar had been headed out to celebrate his 78th birthday with his wife. He was walking down the steps of his house to his car when the two men approached, demanded his wallet and struck him on the head with a handgun.  No arrests have been made. And after their initial inquiries, the police have not followed up, Mr. Huizar said.  “They said they would come back, but they never did,” he said.
The Oakland fire chief said the Ghost Ship warehouse did not appear to have been inspected, and a community activist said the Fruitvale neighborhood’s problems ran deep.