By Paul Elias
OAKLAND, Calif. — The owner of an Oakland warehouse where 36 people died in a fire earlier this month had a business license for more than two decades, but firefighters charged with inspecting city businesses never reviewed the building, city officials confirmed.
Oakland spokeswoman Karen Boyd said Friday that Chor Ng, 62, holds a current license with the city and has paid all business taxes.
The Easy Bay Times was first to report Ng’s business license for the warehouse.
Ng’s license adds to the mounting evidence of apparent communication breakdowns among city officials regarding a cluttered warehouse illegally converted to living space and an entertainment venue.
Fire investigators say they are still trying to determine a cause of the Dec. 2 fire, though say there are no indications of arson. Investigators said they were focusing on electrical appliances plugged into the rear of the building where the fire started on the ground floor.
Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley has launched a criminal investigation that she says could lead to a wide range of charges against the landlord, tenants and others, including murder.
The city has no record of fire and building inspectors ever setting foot in the building that neighbors, former residents and others say they complained to authorities about safety, noise and trash.
Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed said Tuesday that the warehouse was not in her department’s database of businesses to routinely inspect, apparently because the owner didn’t apply for the type of permits that would prompt a fire inspection.
The East Bay Times reported Friday that Ng would have also had to apply for a fire department permit to open a business and that application would have prompted an inspection.
Reed said Tuesday that the department considered the warehouse a vacant building even though it was the target of numerous complaints and a fire station was located less than two blocks away.
“We do not inspect buildings, we inspect businesses,” Reed said during a Tuesday press conference. “There were no indications this was an active business.”
Reed didn’t return phone calls or respond to an email inquiry Friday.
Mayor Libby Schaaf says she has ordered city officials to improve communications between city departments. City Manager Sabrina Landreth said officials are gathering and reviewing police responses to the warehouse in the months before the fire and plan to release them publicly.
Ng, the warehouse owner, has not responded to emails, calls and visits made by The Associated Press since Dec. 3. She didn’t respond to emails and phone calls Friday.
The landlord’s daughter, Eva Ng, told The Los Angeles Times earlier this month that the Ng family didn’t know people were living in the warehouse in violation of city zoning laws.
The deadliest structure fire in the U.S. in more than a decade broke out during a Dec. 2 late-night dance party in the warehouse. The building had been converted to art studios and illegal living spaces, and former denizens said it was a death trap of piled wood, furniture, snaking electrical cords and only two exits
A civil grand jury report in 2014 said 4,000 out of 11,000 buildings in Oakland were going without the yearly inspections. It concluded the city’s website inaccurately implied all commercial buildings received annual inspections.
The department agreed with the finding. It said an annual inspection for each commercial business was a goal but emergency responses and staffing made that more difficult.
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