While we've spent much of the last week following the fire investigation and profiling the 36 dead in Oakland's Ghost Ship fire, there have been notably few first-person accounts to trickle out from inside the fire, save for a handful given to a few news sources within the first 24 hours after the blaze. Now the East Bay Times has done a comprehensive piece speaking to as many survivors, witnesses, and first responders as they could find, and the picture they paint is one of a swiftly moving fire that "chased" people out of the building, and threw up such toxic clouds of "thick, ugly smoke that can knock someone down in a single breath."

One of the most stunning quotes in the piece comes from a firefighter and suggests that — despite reports of zero inspections of the space — at least some people in the local firefighting community knew something about the labyrinthine internal structures in the Ghost Ship space, with its warren of studios, nooks, and makeshift walls. 27-year Oakland Fire Department veteran Lt. Dan Robertson tells the East Bay Times that a fellow firefighter leaned over to him as they approached the blaze in their truck and said, "Hey, I know that building, it’s a maze inside, clustered, all fucked up. It’s going to be really tough getting in, and I think we’re going to have to get defensive very early.”

The paper talks to longtime residents of the neighborhood like Al Garcia, who remembers when the warehouse at 1315 31st Avenue was the Dairy Rich warehouse — which he says he and friends would sneak into late at night and "wander through the rows of parked milk trucks." He says the place never had a staircase, just a conveyor belt that carried empty milk bottles up to a second-level mezzanine which they would ride up and then slide down.

But the scariest accounts come from those inside, primarily those who were residents on the lower level and were getting ready for bed as the fire broke out around 11:20. Residents Nikki Kelber and Carmen Brito, who both previously told parts of their stories to the LA Times, describe the harrowing first moments as they realized how little time they had to escape. Brito, who had already fallen asleep with her clothes on and woke up to smoke, said that "in the time it took her to put on her coat and shoes, a wall that was 20 feet from where she was standing was on fire."

After encountering billowing smoke that "knocked" her back outside her studio at the front of the building, Kelber tells the East Bay Times that she was fumbling to find her cat carrier and rescue her cat, which she did within two minutes, and then encountered "15-foot fireballs down the hallways coming toward me, moving fast."

Garcia also tells the paper of arriving on the scene to check on his store, which neighbors the warehouse, and he found two teenage boys, aged 17 and 18, huddled in the doorway. He says they told him, "We were the last two to get out, but our friend is still in there." They were likely there with 17-year-old Draven McGill, who was among the first victims to be identified after the fire.

The only two accounts of people successfully escaping from the second floor were from a man named Chris, and one posted to Reddit the day after the fire, both of which you can read here, and that as-yet unidentified Redditor had to crawl on his hands and knees beneath the thick smoke and listen to a voice calling "The door is this way!" — which turns out to be that of frequent doorman Max Ohr, who tells the East Bay Times he had tried to run inside and fight the fire with two friends and some fire extinguishers, to no avail. Says Ohr, "It chased people to the door. It was terrifying. It was the most hellish thing I’ve ever seen." He says he saw anywhere from 20 to 50 people come out of the door as he stood there, but "After two minutes, no one else came out."

Artist and Ghost Ship resident Bob Mule, who spoke to media outlets in the hours after the blaze of having to leave behind an injured friend, gave the somewhat unsettling interview below to a YouTuber he met who appears to pretend not to know that Mule was a survivor of the fire, because he's a terrible interviewer. But Mule, clearly still somewhat in shock from the events, tells the terrible story of abandoning his friend, 38-year-old Peter Wadsworth, because Wadsworth had apparently broken his ankle coming down from a sleeping loft. According to Mule, Wadsworth told him, "You have to pull me out," but Mule says that not only did his path become blocked by a fallen bicycle, but Wadsworth was a "bigger guy" and he couldn't just throw him over a shoulder. His survival instinct kicked in, and he ran out, saving himself. Wadsworth was the only resident of the collective to lose his life.

The account below from Robertson describes the impossible firefight, even given protective gear and oxygen tanks.

Robertson had about 15 minutes on his tank as he tried to penetrate deeper into the building, searching for a staircase. But his helmet kept bumping into things, a piano bench here, a sculpture there. His gloved hands felt the way forward. A narrow path to the left. Five more feet and a dead end to the right. He pulled more than 50 feet of hose, but with his serpentine path, he barely advanced 20 feet.
“We had no choice but to zigzag through,” he said.
As his crew aimed the hoses to the ceiling, the water heated by the flames cascaded down like hot syrup seeping under his collar. Debris fell and timbers crackled. With his air running too low and the fire burning too hot, Robertson’s “mental alarm” started ringing and an image of Oakland firefighter Tracy Toomey streaked through his mind. In 1999, the 52-year-old was killed when the second story of a burning home collapsed on top of him.
About 30 minutes after the first firefighter arrived to the warehouse, Robertson heard the battalion chief’s radio call of retreat: “We’re going defensive!”

It seems clear that very few people, if anyone, survived that long who was trapped on the second floor. Many likely passed out or died from smoke inhalation within minutes, though we know that at least several of the survivors had time to text parents and loved ones final messages, saying they knew they were going to die.


Previously: Survivors Give Terrifying Accounts Of Escaping Oakland's 'Ghost Ship' Fire