Oakland Again

[tmurray]

The problem I see often when it comes to those in the enforcement community is that they taint their decision making process in favor of their desired outcome. We asked this question at a conference recently: "There is extreme settlement of a garage. The permit was issued and all inspections were completed approximately 3 years ago. You receive a call from the owner about the settlement, what do you do?". People overwhelmingly said that since the building permit is closed, they would not stop by to do an inspection. When asked why, they stated they do not have the authority to enter the property. While this is true that they cannot simply walk onto the property without the owner's permission, in this case the owner was inviting them onto the property. This time they claimed that if they entered onto the property that they would be increasing their liability.

You see they didn't want to deal with the property owner who might have a legitimate concern. They looked for any reason why they do not need to do what they don't want to. You can usually see this in the reasoning. When someone does not provide a good reason why they do something, they are not giving the true reason. In this case, even the liability reason is flawed. As long as they explained the limits of what they would be able to inspect, the inspection would actually mitigate rather than exacerbate liability.

I feel this might be their approach as well. They get a concern forwarded to them by their staff and it doesn't quite fit the policy, so they ignore it. Fast forward a couple years and the problem kills someone, have fun explaining why you are not liable when a member of your own staff informed you there might be an issue. We investigate every complaint. Every. Single. One. Even the ones I know are going to be BS. Once in a while I am surprised when they turn into legitimate concerns.

 

[conarb]

What we are getting down to is that inspections are all about making money to pay the broke pension funds.

OAKLAND — Officials in this fire-ravaged city reacted with alarm Monday over a report by this news organization that almost 80 percent of firefighter referrals to inspect dangerous conditions went ignored over the last six years.

“It is horrifying,” Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan said of the investigation’s findings. “In fact, one of the issues (the story) identified is how it gets decided who gets inspected.”

In early 2017, a few months after the Ghost Ship warehouse fire killed 36 people, Kaplan proposed reprioritizing which businesses get inspected. Kaplan said she had heard from residents who said their businesses received multiple inspections, while others were never inspected.

“I’ve been getting complaints from random small business owners that say they get fire inspections over and over again for no reason and charged a fee,” Kaplan said Monday.

Former Oakland city inspector Mark Grissom, who is now a wildlands firefighter for the federal government, told this news organization that the Fire Prevention Bureau would prioritize modern buildings with superior fire-prevention systems to inspect because the agency knew it would get paid for its inspection services. The city charges for fire inspections, and Grissom said that at older buildings in poorer neighborhoods, inspectors knew that if they conducted an inspection, the payment might not happen.¹

There seems no end to Oakland’s government dysfunction.

Over a six-year period, fire inspectors failed to examine nearly 80 percent of buildings firefighters had referred to them for followup of dangerous conditions, according to a Bay Area News Group data analysis.

The acting fire chief’s response: A refusal to answer questions and a canned statement that the problems were due primarily to staffing shortages and computer database problems.

But if you want a sense of the community’s response, consider the comments of a man who lived next door to a building that burned down — one of those that was supposed to be inspected but never was.

“I guess this is Oakland,” he said. “You can’t really expect it.”
Oakland firefighters checked a “referral” box in the department’s software in an attempt to flag inspectors to visit the halfway house on San Pablo Avenue, but the program had a flaw and nothing was inspected for two years. The building burned down March 27, killing four people. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group Archives)
An Oakland halfway house, where four people died in March, had been flagged 16 months earlier for an inspection that didn’t happen. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group Archives)

That’s how low the bar has sunk in the Bay Area’s third largest city. Residents have stopped expecting basic municipal services: Fire inspections. Police showing up when you call. Decent roads. Responsible management of public money.

Instead, this is the city where 36 people died in the infamous Ghost Ship warehouse inferno after firefighters ignored the dangerous conditions — and some had even attended a party there.

This is the city where four died in a fire at a halfway house, where 16 months earlier a firefighter had requested an inspection that never happened, and a few months before the blaze a fire captain had urged that the building be shut down, only to be overruled. The city where hillside fire inspection reports were apparently faked.

Where the police department is in its 14th year of federal court oversight, yet cops cavorted with a sexually exploited teenager and their behavior was first swept under the rug by fellow officers who conducted an inept investigation.

Where basic road maintenance is abandoned, allowing streets to deteriorate so badly that it will take $443 million, paid mostly with a new property tax, to fix it.

Where City Council members and mayors — be they named Dellums, Quan or Schaaf — cannot contain spending to the available funds despite the city’s high tax rates, including a hidden levy for pensions.²

Interesting that the list of mayors neglects to include Jerry "Climate Change" Brown, in his first go-around at trying to destroy the state as governor he was Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown, we had major droughts during both of his administrations, in an effort to save water his motto was "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down", you can imagine the fun we had with that one.

What's really going on this is the pension funds are insolvent and the local AHJs are doing everything to divert monies to try to keep them solvent so they have something to retire on, after all that's why they work.


¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07/17/it-is-horrifying-oakland-officials-respond-to-fire-findings/

² http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07/18/editorial-this-is-how-low-the-bar-has-sunk-in-oakland/

 

[conarb]

This in the paper today:

OAKLAND — There was a ceremony here Wednesday to mark the groundbreaking for the Alexan Webster, a new 234-unit, mixed-use project, but it wasn’t the backdrop either the developers or city officials had anticipated for such a momentous day.

Looming overhead were the contorted charred remains of the Alta Waverly, a 196-unit market-rate apartment complex already under construction that was destroyed July 7 in a suspicious fire. Crews with an excavator working to clear parts of the mangled wreckage ceased their work at the request of program organizers so the noise wouldn’t drown out the day’s speeches celebrating the new project.

It’s too early to know what impact the fires will have on investor and developer confidence in Oakland. It takes years to pull together financing proposals, secure investors, find and buy property, draft plans for a development and then get them approved by the city’s Planning Commission, a lengthy and often contentious process. By the time developers are breaking ground on a new project, they’re already committed, usually contractually or financially, to the project, said Mark McClure, president of the Oakland Builders Alliance.

“By their nature, developers are optimists,” McClure said. “You have to be if you’re taking the risks they are.”

However, he said developers in the East Bay are paying close attention to how much companies are charging to insure projects.

Some said the impact from the fires is already being felt in rising costs. “We’re incurring more from a security standpoint, and we fully expect our insurance costs to increase,” said Bruce Dorfman, senior managing director for Trammell Crow Residential, the developer for the Alexan Webster. “It’s having a dramatic impact not just on our project but throughout the industry and the region.”

McConnell, who attended the meeting, said developers had requested more police protection at sites, particularly ones where the wood is still exposed and sprinkler systems haven’t yet been installed, making them easier to burn. In the case of all four fires, McConnell said the buildings were in that fragile state. He said Schaaf told developers there weren’t enough cops. Some developers also want to put barbed wire around their sites.

“We have five or six more going up in the Valdez corridor that are going to be just like those (at previous fires), and we’re going to have to be real vigilant,” he said.¹

We don't need building inspectors, we need cops, Oakland is full of Democrats, anti-capitalists, anarchists and other viscous groups.



¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07...nstruction-project-damaged-in-suspcious-fire/

 

[tmurray]

“By their nature, developers are optimists,”

Truer words have never been spoken.

Our new mid rise wood provisions require operational sprinkler systems on a floor before they can move to the next storey. Something similar might be in order here.

 

[conarb]

“By their nature, developers are optimists,”

Truer words have never been spoken.

Our new mid rise wood provisions require operational sprinkler systems on a floor before they can move to the next storey. Something similar might be in order here.

That's one Hell of an idea, given the political climate here that should be an emergency code requirement.

 

[cda]

“By their nature, developers are optimists,”

Truer words have never been spoken.

Our new mid rise wood provisions require operational sprinkler systems on a floor before they can move to the next storey. Something similar might be in order here.

Will you post the wording on that requirement.

And how are the sprinkler and gc's taking it and how are the installs going??


Thanks

 

[tmurray]

It just passed it's public review, so the final wording is not yet known, but the basics are that the progressive installation of automatic sprinklers require the sprinklers to be active on a storey before construction can commence on the storey above. It is understood that sprinklers may need to be deactivated during construction, however the time they are to be deactivated must be minimized.

There are obvious concerns related to cold weather work and there is a lot of discretion involved. But realistically, these building go up fast and require a significant amount of scheduling.

Basically, It is possible. It is hard to do. It keeps the people who shouldn't be doing this kind of work away from it.

We don't see a lot of arson here, our fires are mostly some idiot doing hot works who leaves and goes for a smoke break. Forgets he is not working in a concrete building and doesn't do the proper shut down procedure. From what I've read, most of the mid-west ones in the US are the same reason. Unfortunately, sprinklers don't cure stupid.

 

[conarb]

Basically, It is possible. It is hard to do. It keeps the people who shouldn't be doing this kind of work away from it.

California requires anyone touching a sprinklers system graduate from a state approved apprenticeship system, that means they are union sprinkler fitters since the unions run the apprenticeship program.

 

[tmurray]

That should be helpful. I don't have a lot of faith in apprenticeship programs. Our carpentry program here have had people graduate who don't know what a miter joint is. Typically, the carpenters union throws them on a low skill job and just says they completed all the necessary disciplines. Meanwhile, they've only done formwork for four years.

 

[conarb]

That should be helpful. I don't have a lot of faith in apprenticeship programs. Our carpentry program here have had people graduate who don't know what a miter joint is. Typically, the carpenters union throws them on a low skill job and just says they completed all the necessary disciplines. Meanwhile, they've only done formwork for four years.

Unfortunately the same thing has happened here, back when all legitimate contractors were union I tried to keep my mix at 50% residential and 50% a combination or industrial/commercial/government jobs to keep my apprenticeship mixes up to union rules so I wouldn't lose them after spending a lot of money training them, hopefully the sprinkler fitters' union will try doing something similar.

 

[linnrg]

a sprinkler guy told me this about the difference between a plumber or a pipe fitter:
Upon application the person is told to get up to the neck into a vat of **** then they swing a iron pipe at the head,
those that dive into the **** are plumbers those who take the pipe to the head are pipe fitters!

 

[conarb]

Now the activists are burning down buildings in Boston