The fire chief, Theresa Reed, makes over $300K/year, but is real busy working on diversity issues, attending NAACP events and stuff like that... so she probably doesn't have time for fire safety.
The city of Oakland pays more per year in debt service alone than it collects from all property taxes.
It seems that the whole purpose of the city government is to enrich the bureaucrats.
The fire department should have condemned that building, what were they thinking turning a blind eye to this obvious hippie apartment which never should have allowed any occupancy.
Oakland has sadly gone the way of places like Detroit when it comes to leadership. I can remember living there right after WWI ended and my father returned from four years in Australia with the US Navy. It was a very nice city with a long line of Republican mayors. Unfortunately, like Detroit it has suffered from RAT and Black RAT Mayors since the term of Republican Mayor John H. Reading ended in 1973. He was followed by Lionel Wilson, a black RAT former superior court judge, then Elihu Harris, a Black RAT, then our ubiquitous Governor Jerry Brown had his turn in between his two 8 year stints as our governor, followed by Black RAT Communist, Ron Dellums, who left his congressional to become mayor, later still Jean Quan a Chinese Commuinist, and Now Libby Schaaf who is a Capo. With this kind of “leadership” is it any wonder what happened?