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Oakland CA fire tragedy: 'My mama's burning'
Will Kane, John King,Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, December 31, 2010
(12-30) 19:56 PST Oakland CA -- Fire on a frigid night tore through an East Oakland apartment, killing a mother, her daughter and a man who lived in an upstairs unit that had its power shut off earlier this month.
Desperate for electricity, the mother and her two children had dangled a heavy-duty outdoor extension cord over their second-story balcony and plugged it into their downstairs neighbor's outlet. That jury-rigged electrical system - used to power lamps, appliances and strings of Christmas lights - sparked just before 2 a.m. Thursday and ignited a blaze in the apartment at 82nd Avenue and Birch Street that shot flames out of the second-story windows.
Friends identified the dead woman as Ruth Muñoz, a 27-year-old immigrant from El Salvador. They said she was a housekeeper who had lost her job six months ago and was struggling to make ends meet for herself and her children, ages 7 and 3. Muñoz's husband, friends said, is behind bars, awaiting deportation to El Salvador.
The woman and her 3-year-old girl, identified by friends as Yvonne Benavides, died in the blaze along with a man neighbors identified only as "Memo."
Memo, who was staying in Muñoz's second bedroom, carried Muñoz's older daughter, Allison Benavides, to safety when the fire started, fire officials said. But he died after re-entering the burning apartment to help Muñoz and Yvonne, fire officials said.
Two other people broke their legs when they jumped from second-story windows to escape the fire.
One first-floor resident who fled the burning building described a horrific early-morning scene.
"I could hear the noises upstairs, and the screaming of ladies when they were jumping out the windows," said Erika Arana, who was in a downstairs apartment with her three children. "That's what woke us up."
Arana had moved into the small apartment building only the day before, invited by residents who knew she needed a place but had no money for rent. The apartment building is bank-owned, and several people said the bank had apparently given up on collecting rent.
Across the street, Edwin Benevides was awakened by his son Diego as flames billowed from the four-unit apartment building. Outside, he saw Allison standing in the street.
"She was screaming, 'Mama! My mama's burning,' "he said.
Benevides said he knew his neighbors only vaguely. Muñoz, he said, would make and sell pupusas and other Salvadoran food.
"It was just people living their lives," he said.
Thirty-one firefighters rushed to the scene, said Eleanor Bolin-Chew, a battalion chief with the Oakland Fire Department.
Within minutes of arriving, firefighters entered the apartment and pulled out Muñoz, Yvonne and Memo. All three were pronounced dead at a hospital.
By late Thursday morning the firefighting crews were gone, leaving heaps of blackened furniture and other items piled in the driveway of the apartment building, a nondescript beige structure with three garage doors facing the street and tall security gates on either side.
Inside the gate leading to the apartment doors, ashes and soot covered a stroller, a scooter and two small bicycles.
Ruby Ibarra, a friend of Muñoz, said Muñoz moved to the United States from El Salvador six years ago and had lived in the apartment for two years. Muñoz had struggled since losing her housekeeping job, Ibarra said.
"She was a good mom," she said. "She was a very happy person trying to get a better future for her family in the United States."
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. shut off power to the second-story unit on Dec. 2, fire officials said. Brandi Ehlers, a PG&E spokeswoman, would not say why. If it was a billing issue, Muñoz would have had 65 days to pay her bill before the power was turned off, Ehlers said.
Muñoz turned to a downstairs neighbor for power, tapping into an outlet with an orange, heavy-duty outdoor extension cord that ran upstairs into her apartment. There, the extension unit was plugged with a mix of high-capacity and low-capacity extension cords that were daisy-chained to a television, stereo, lights, appliances and what Maria Sabatini, a fire investigator, described as "a lot" of Christmas lights.
The mix of cords caused sparking inside the second-story unit and ignited a piece of furniture, Sabatini said.
Because the apartment had no smoke alarms, Muñoz, her children and Memo didn't know a fire had started until it was too late, Sabatini said.
The apartment building, built in 1959, is managed by the Bank of New York Trust, according to public documents.
Rene Martinez, 43, who bought the building in 2005 with a Bank of America loan, said he walked away from the property in 2007 because he could no longer afford the roughly $3,100 monthly payment. By August 2008, he said, the bank owned the 3,179-square-foot building.
Martinez said he had intended the building to be a source of income for his retirement. But after paying the mortgage, water and garbage bills - the renters paid their power bills - he was losing money.
"I could not pay the minimum payment," he said. "So I decided to just let it go."
Gilda Gonzales, director of the Unity Council, an Oakland-based group that supports the Spanish-speaking poor, said there are dozens, if not hundreds, of people living in foreclosed buildings throughout East Oakland. While banks often pay the garbage and water bills, they don't play close attention to their properties.
"The issue here is so big and you have countless people who are in this situation," she said.
In this case, some said, an attentive landlord may have known that Muñoz was without power and noticed the extension cord running from the first to the second story. Or they might have known that the building did not have a single functioning smoke detector.
"We just have to put pressure on these big banks in New York City to pay attention, so more families don't die," said Larry Reid, a member of Oakland's City Council.
Federal officials said late Thursday that they were delaying the deportation of Muñoz's husband, Nelson Benavides, 28, until they decided what to do with Allison.
Ibarra, Muñoz's friend, said: "I just want him to be released so he can be with the baby that's alive," she said.
E-mail the writers at wkane@sfchronicle.com, jking@sfchronicle.com and mkuruvila@sfchronicle.com.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/30/BAOO1H1QKK.DTL#ixzz19ist6kiW
Will Kane, John King,Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, December 31, 2010
(12-30) 19:56 PST Oakland CA -- Fire on a frigid night tore through an East Oakland apartment, killing a mother, her daughter and a man who lived in an upstairs unit that had its power shut off earlier this month.
Desperate for electricity, the mother and her two children had dangled a heavy-duty outdoor extension cord over their second-story balcony and plugged it into their downstairs neighbor's outlet. That jury-rigged electrical system - used to power lamps, appliances and strings of Christmas lights - sparked just before 2 a.m. Thursday and ignited a blaze in the apartment at 82nd Avenue and Birch Street that shot flames out of the second-story windows.
Friends identified the dead woman as Ruth Muñoz, a 27-year-old immigrant from El Salvador. They said she was a housekeeper who had lost her job six months ago and was struggling to make ends meet for herself and her children, ages 7 and 3. Muñoz's husband, friends said, is behind bars, awaiting deportation to El Salvador.
The woman and her 3-year-old girl, identified by friends as Yvonne Benavides, died in the blaze along with a man neighbors identified only as "Memo."
Memo, who was staying in Muñoz's second bedroom, carried Muñoz's older daughter, Allison Benavides, to safety when the fire started, fire officials said. But he died after re-entering the burning apartment to help Muñoz and Yvonne, fire officials said.
Two other people broke their legs when they jumped from second-story windows to escape the fire.
One first-floor resident who fled the burning building described a horrific early-morning scene.
"I could hear the noises upstairs, and the screaming of ladies when they were jumping out the windows," said Erika Arana, who was in a downstairs apartment with her three children. "That's what woke us up."
Arana had moved into the small apartment building only the day before, invited by residents who knew she needed a place but had no money for rent. The apartment building is bank-owned, and several people said the bank had apparently given up on collecting rent.
Across the street, Edwin Benevides was awakened by his son Diego as flames billowed from the four-unit apartment building. Outside, he saw Allison standing in the street.
"She was screaming, 'Mama! My mama's burning,' "he said.
Benevides said he knew his neighbors only vaguely. Muñoz, he said, would make and sell pupusas and other Salvadoran food.
"It was just people living their lives," he said.
Thirty-one firefighters rushed to the scene, said Eleanor Bolin-Chew, a battalion chief with the Oakland Fire Department.
Within minutes of arriving, firefighters entered the apartment and pulled out Muñoz, Yvonne and Memo. All three were pronounced dead at a hospital.
By late Thursday morning the firefighting crews were gone, leaving heaps of blackened furniture and other items piled in the driveway of the apartment building, a nondescript beige structure with three garage doors facing the street and tall security gates on either side.
Inside the gate leading to the apartment doors, ashes and soot covered a stroller, a scooter and two small bicycles.
Ruby Ibarra, a friend of Muñoz, said Muñoz moved to the United States from El Salvador six years ago and had lived in the apartment for two years. Muñoz had struggled since losing her housekeeping job, Ibarra said.
"She was a good mom," she said. "She was a very happy person trying to get a better future for her family in the United States."
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. shut off power to the second-story unit on Dec. 2, fire officials said. Brandi Ehlers, a PG&E spokeswoman, would not say why. If it was a billing issue, Muñoz would have had 65 days to pay her bill before the power was turned off, Ehlers said.
Muñoz turned to a downstairs neighbor for power, tapping into an outlet with an orange, heavy-duty outdoor extension cord that ran upstairs into her apartment. There, the extension unit was plugged with a mix of high-capacity and low-capacity extension cords that were daisy-chained to a television, stereo, lights, appliances and what Maria Sabatini, a fire investigator, described as "a lot" of Christmas lights.
The mix of cords caused sparking inside the second-story unit and ignited a piece of furniture, Sabatini said.
Because the apartment had no smoke alarms, Muñoz, her children and Memo didn't know a fire had started until it was too late, Sabatini said.
The apartment building, built in 1959, is managed by the Bank of New York Trust, according to public documents.
Rene Martinez, 43, who bought the building in 2005 with a Bank of America loan, said he walked away from the property in 2007 because he could no longer afford the roughly $3,100 monthly payment. By August 2008, he said, the bank owned the 3,179-square-foot building.
Martinez said he had intended the building to be a source of income for his retirement. But after paying the mortgage, water and garbage bills - the renters paid their power bills - he was losing money.
"I could not pay the minimum payment," he said. "So I decided to just let it go."
Gilda Gonzales, director of the Unity Council, an Oakland-based group that supports the Spanish-speaking poor, said there are dozens, if not hundreds, of people living in foreclosed buildings throughout East Oakland. While banks often pay the garbage and water bills, they don't play close attention to their properties.
"The issue here is so big and you have countless people who are in this situation," she said.
In this case, some said, an attentive landlord may have known that Muñoz was without power and noticed the extension cord running from the first to the second story. Or they might have known that the building did not have a single functioning smoke detector.
"We just have to put pressure on these big banks in New York City to pay attention, so more families don't die," said Larry Reid, a member of Oakland's City Council.
Federal officials said late Thursday that they were delaying the deportation of Muñoz's husband, Nelson Benavides, 28, until they decided what to do with Allison.
Ibarra, Muñoz's friend, said: "I just want him to be released so he can be with the baby that's alive," she said.
E-mail the writers at wkane@sfchronicle.com, jking@sfchronicle.com and mkuruvila@sfchronicle.com.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/30/BAOO1H1QKK.DTL#ixzz19ist6kiW
