The Oakland warehouse fire that killed 36 people at the start of December has escalated an already tense relationship between the city’s firefighters union and Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed.
The tragedy, in general, has left the city wondering how this could happen, and what and who is to blame.
Reed is personally being accused by several union officials due to issues with the management of the department, specifically the fire department’s inspection bureau, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The so-called “Ghost Ship” warehouse was reportedly never inspected by the fire department before the deadly Dec. 2 fire.
The almost labyrinth-like configuration and cluttered state of the residence made it vulnerable to emergencies.
“I got lost there the first time I went in,” Carmen Brito, a resident, told The New York Times.
The building had very few legitimate interior walls so lofts were divided with pallets and furniture, which one visitor called a “tinderbox,” according to The NYT.
“I can’t answer how that warehouse slipped through the cracks and that it bypassed our system — or how it bypassed the city’s system,” Reed said, according to CNN. “But everybody is at the table right now trying to figure out what happened.”
Back in 2014, an Alameda County civil grand jury ruled that the bureau failed to vet certain properties even though annual checkups are required. Reed was supposed to appoint a marshal to run the bureau in 2015, but chose to head the division herself — a fact union bosses are eager to highlight.
“We have been pushing (Deloach Reed) every month to make the hire and do the inspection,” union Vice President Zac Unger said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “It creates dangerous situations for our firefighters and for our citizens.”
Tensions first arose between the union and Reed within a year of her taking over the chief position.
Reed is the first black woman to lead a major fire department in the U.S., and is backed by black Oakland leaders who say that Mayor Libby Schaaf’s administration is getting ready to use the Oakland Fire Chief as a scapegoat.
But Schaaf, who is white, has disputed this assertion saying that she will “not scapegoat city employees in the wake of this disaster.”
The mayor’s officer seems to find the way the union is conducting itself — readily blaming the fire chief — as not in the best interest of the city or the parties involved.
“The union may think this is the right track, but we don’t,” Schaff’s spokeswoman, Erica Terry Derryck, said. “This is not the time for divisiveness.”
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