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I just hope those responsible rot. Its hard for me to feel anything but angry over this.

The difficulty is figuring out who's actually responsible. If the posted article is accurate, Almena pretty clearly is, and Harris really isn't, but lots of people and institutions who aren't being charged seem to share culpability with Almena. It's just not that cut-and-dry.

Yeah. That article was really sad and it doesn't seem like there can ever be "justice"; it's such a complicated situation. I just hope that the families can find a way to move on somehow and that it provides impetus to improve the institutional systems which should be trying to prevent these events.

coldbrightsunlight wrote:Yeah. That article was really sad and it doesn't seem like there can ever be "justice"; it's such a complicated situation. I just hope that the families can find a way to move on somehow and that it provides impetus to improve the institutional systems which should be trying to prevent these events.

yeah. that whole situation is such a bummer.
miss psychic vampire right now. quality poster.

Everyone involved is at fault including this guy. He knew and reported faulty wiring and electrical issues, so it was sheer negligence that led to all of this. That and have an enormous amount of fire code violations. It was completely preventable.

Now, I will say his heart was in the right place. He clearly didn’t know the dangers, which is insane.


IMO the building owners, the landlords and the tenants who knew about the issues should all be in jail. Ignorance is not an excuse in cases like these.

Also I as well miss her and this shit pisses me off.

We don't know all the legality of all of it. I wonder if part of the lease was written in a way that the building doesn't have heat and warned of limited electrical power that the tenants had to sign off about. That is the only way to explain how the owners of the building aren't on trial. Or greasing the right palms, I guess. Our justice system is quite flawed. My point is that I struggle to understand why, and then realized it may not be the landlord's fault if the tenants were misusing the power. I would love to know more facts about it all.

From what I understand is that the Ghost Ship people had limited power in the building and ran a bunch of extension cords from next door. Extension cords are meant for temporary use and not as permanent installation, and laying around constantly leaves them open to abuse from getting trampled and worn, leading to issues with the insulation splitting. Not every cord is the same gauge of wire inside either, which limits how many amps that cord can handle. Stringing out multiple cords together will result in lower voltage at the end too, which in turn can make amp draw go up. High amp draw and/or poor connections will lead to the wires generating heat and can eventually melt the insulation of the wire, causing the hot voltage and neutral or ground wires to arc and burn. Scary shit. Is this all common sense? I would argue that it is not. Quite often I see homeowners running an extension cord to a fixed appliance, like a 2nd fridge or water softener in their basement, which is technically against electrical code. If the house burned down due to those electrical cords then the homeowner's insurance could possibly deny the claim citing improper use of an appliance. If a rental house burned down for this same situation, how could the landlord be responsible? I actually wonder if the landlord could sue the tenants for destroying the property? Now, apply this line of thinking to the Ghost Ship disaster.

My old boss was terrified of getting a $10,000 OSHA fine and took every measure so he would not be liable. They trained us on the proper use of extension cords and bought some very expensive cords to use, throwing out the thousands of feet we had all accumulated on our trucks. They bought us the heaviest duty cords they could find, super expensive, and made us sign off that we performed monthly inspections. Basically if the outer insulation is damaged in any way, frayed, or broken near the ends then the cord is supposed to be thrown away or repaired by a licensed electrician. We sent our off regularly to have repaired by an electrician. Seemed like overkill at the time, maybe not now.

None of my comments are meant to take away from the sheer sadness of the situation. I hope that is clear.

I can't recall ever interacting directly with PsychicVampire. Gear searches will often result with a post from her somewhere. She had a uniquely eloquent way of writing, clearly a strong voice. As a cisgendered white man I will never fully understand the struggles with being trans but I do sympathize. I am happy ILF is an open place where people can come be themselves and be accepted. Our little community means more to some of us than maybe we always realize. I know that I am inherently a better person for knowing so many of you.


{edited grammar}

fucking quality post, contra.
lots of insight that I think is pretty helpful for everybody to be thinking about.

codetocontra wrote:We don't know all the legality of all of it. I wonder if part of the lease was written in a way that the building doesn't have heat and warned of limited electrical power that the tenants had to sign off about. That is the only way to explain how the owners of the building aren't on trial. Or greasing the right palms, I guess. Our justice system is quite flawed. My point is that I struggle to understand why, and then realized it may not be the landlord's fault if the tenants were misusing the power. I would love to know more facts about it all.

I'm obviously not a lawyer, but most states have laws that protect residential tenants from crazy shit like that, rendering those sorts of clauses unenforceable. The same is often not true of commercial leases, however, so it's conceivable that the landlord was renting it as a commercial property (which is almost certainly what it was zoned for), calling it an artist's studio or whatever, and just looking the other way when it came to people sleeping there. If that's true, there's probably something that can be done to hold the landlord in violation of zoning and/or leasing laws, but they'd probably have to prove that the landlord knowingly used a commercial lease as a pretense to evade legal residential protections to tie him or her to the fire in any culpable way.

I think that's exactly what was happening but not just that one spot in the building, the entire building. It was clearly a commercial building and I think the city must have granted it either the proper zoning or they just didn't care.

So, here's the thing I know as a landlord in KS. You under a legal obligation to provide heat and ac to tenants. How you do that is up to you in some cities. So, if you are a dumb ass and have an old building with old wiring, you could still let them overtap the breakers and cause a fire. I've almost had a fire cause in one of my homes because the people were running space heaters all over (serious those things are only meant for a small area, not to warm an entire house). Thing that kills me is that their furnace runs great, they are just dumb. I informed them that "hey you're going to burn my place down and if you don't have renters insurance, well, you stuff is going to go up in smoke too". I have a million dollar policy per property in case of shit like that. My property doesn't have massive power issue however, it just had a breaker being over used (which was corrected).

The people who own this building have a legal obligation to fix the electrical issues and if they are bad enough, you have to pull the property from the rental market until said issues are corrected.

The landlord is at the most fault. The guy here, I guess he could have been ignorant to the dangers. I never would have thought that a possibility prior to being a property owner. I give every person I have move in a fire prevention packet and a get out safe packet for fires. People just don't think.

Man...this whole thing is so shitty still. I'm sorry PV. Rest in peace.

Its all so fucked. There probably will never be true justice. Not unless someone magically figures out how to bring back those we lost.

I should have clocked Almena when I met him. I wish I could have known what was gonna happen. I could have reported that shit. Maybe if I had lived there in the end I could have fucking helped people escape.

Fuck man. Just fuck.

Another fucked thing this has done is fucked with the existence of art spaces that aren't as janky. Im sure this has already started the witch hunt of "WAREHOUSE ART SPACES ARE ALL DEATH TRAPS HURR DURR" and that pissed me off.

BitchPudding wrote:Another fucked thing this has done is fucked with the existence of art spaces that aren't as janky. Im sure this has already started the witch hunt of "WAREHOUSE ART SPACES ARE ALL DEATH TRAPS HURR DURR" and that pissed me off.

You know that busybody suburban soccer moms just can't stand to allow the peasant artists to have warehouse spaces hidden in the city for fear they might have to act like they give a shit the next time there's a fire like this.

jrfox92 wrote:

BitchPudding wrote:Another fucked thing this has done is fucked with the existence of art spaces that aren't as janky. Im sure this has already started the witch hunt of "WAREHOUSE ART SPACES ARE ALL DEATH TRAPS HURR DURR" and that pissed me off.

You know that busybody suburban soccer moms just can't stand to allow the peasant artists to have warehouse spaces hidden in the city for fear they might have to act like they give a shit the next time there's a fire like this.

daaaaamn. that’s some real talk.

Seriously. Talk to em jrfox92.