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the future is WOW posted:I assume he meant the deadliest hotel fire in American history, since there are plenty of other building fires that killed many more. For example the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 people, the majority of them (123) being women and children. So every time you don't burn to death at work because your piece of poo poo bosses locked you in from the outside you can thank those folks. Yeah, i meant hotel fire. Edit: Reposting so it's not lost at the end of the last page. In a few days it will be the 70th anniversary of the Winecoff Hotel fire, the deadliest in American history and mostly forgotten these days. It was December 7th 1946 in Atlanta, the beautiful Winecoff Hotel was packed with high school students from around Georgia due to the annual YMCA Youth Assembly.. The Winecoff was one of the most luxurious hotels in the city and many of these people were probably excited to be in the "big city" for the first time. It was around 3 AM when a bellhop discovered a small fire in a third floor hallway. It shouldn't be a problem though,right? After all, look at this hotel ad "Absolutely Fireproof" Well, that's technically true, the building itself is fireproof for the most part. Unfortunately the interior was most certainly not fireproof. But since it was "Fireproof" there hadn't been such silly things like "sprinklers", "fire doors", or "fire escapes" installed. Now, look at the hotel floorplan, see the problem? Yeah, the Winecoff had a opening in the middle containing the staircases and elevator shafts in one big shaft that quickly became one big chimney, letting the smoke rise. There were two Atlanta Fire Department stations two blocks away and firefighters were on the scene 30 seconds after being called but it was already too late, a hotel is filled with flammable things like carpet, mattresses, sheets, and people and the fire spread up that shaft very, very quickly. For the people inside sleeping they had a problem, some were able to make a makeshift "bridge" over an alley yet others were able to rescued by firefighters. The fire department's ladders could only go to the 7th floor of the 15 floor hotel. Those above the 7th floor either burned, suffocated or were force to jump and died on the sidewalk and streets. A firefighter was killed when a jumper slammed into him. 119 people died, including the hotel's owner who lived in the 15th floor penthouse. Due to the YMCA gathering the dead included members from all over Georgia. In one tragic case a letter one student wrote to her family about the good time she was having only arrived after news of her death in the fire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rdUq2Eg47k The hotel is open nowadays as the Ellis Hotel, a upper class, boutique kind of place with only a small, lonely, plaque hidden behind a subway entrance. The Winecoff does have one lingering effect though felt daily throughout the country. The fire so shocked the nation that within a few years the loopholes that had allowed the Winecoff to avoid fireproofing the interior had been closed. So, every time you stay in a hotel and don't burn to death try to remember the Winecoff. I've posted links for more reading regarding the fire below if anyone wants to learn more including some absolutely astonishing survivors experiences. http://www.firehouse.com/news/10568390/the-winecoff-fire-our-nations-deadliest-hotel-fire http://my.firefighternation.com/profiles/blogs/historic-loss-of-life-the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winecoff_Hotel_fire http://bainbridgega.com/news/publish/article_6268.shtml http://www.winecoff.org/2011/11/last-letter-discovered.html
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 05:07 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 03:38 |
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Punkin Spunkin posted:The darkest & guiltiest of at building a giant oven and then calling it fire proof IIRC that actually happened in San Francisco in the 1851 fire. Some residents had built "fireproof" houses with iron siding and roofs after a previous fire in the city, but ended up getting baked to death when heat expansion made the metal doors and window shutters stick fast and the internal wood structures caught on fire from radiant heat.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 05:26 |
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If we're covering influential fires, I'll put in a plug for the 1874 Granite Mill fire in Massachusetts. Another case of a building constructed under really weak fire codes. It was a textile mill, and one of the spinning machines got hung up and heated up with friction starting the fire. Hoses were deployed, but turned out to have no water pressure. The fire escapes went as high as the fifth floor, so a lot of folks made it out, but those working on the sixth floor were trapped, and since no alarm was sounded many of them were cut off from the lower floors by the time they realized there was a problem. Twenty-some people died, many of them due to jumping from the sixth floor windows. http://www.athm.org/granite-mill-fire/ The fire had an impact on revising the fire codes at the time, but retains a little fame today because a deliciously morbid ballad about the fire is covered by some modern folk musicians. I'm a huge fan of Tim Eriksen, and here's his version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__kM-T8Tqo4 quote:In this vain world of trouble, many accidents occur
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 05:54 |
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Didn't firefighters back in those days deploy some sort of trampoline for jumpers to land on? I swear this is what always happened in books I read as a kid.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 06:38 |
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pookel posted:Didn't firefighters back in those days deploy some sort of trampoline for jumpers to land on? I swear this is what always happened in books I read as a kid. imagine you could catch someone with an old-style tough blanket
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 07:08 |
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pookel posted:Didn't firefighters back in those days deploy some sort of trampoline for jumpers to land on? I swear this is what always happened in books I read as a kid. They weren't invented until 13 years after the Granite Mill fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_net quote:In 1958, a fire department official in Eugene, Oregon expressed reservations, saying that the term "life net" was misleading, and that they should be used only as a last resort.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 07:11 |
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Henker posted:Fortunately implosion-type nuclear weapons are extremely difficult to accidentally detonate. That's why there are so many stories of "oops a bomb accidentally fell off the plane" and nothing happened. Enh...they're difficult to accidentally detonate and get *full yield*. That's one of the things Command & Control gets into: the one-point safety stuff is comparatively recent and plenty of the stuff we were flying around all the time wasn't actually one-point safe.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 07:13 |
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pookel posted:Didn't firefighters back in those days deploy some sort of trampoline for jumpers to land on? I swear this is what always happened in books I read as a kid. I googled it up, and the Life Net wasn't invented until 1887, too late to help at the Granite Mill. It also maxes out around 6 stories, so higher than that and you're likely hosed: quote:Firefighters believed that the practical height limit for successful use of life nets was about six stories, although in a 1930 Chicago fire, three people survived jumps from an eighth story into a life net. One suffered a skull fracture, and the other two had minor injuries.[3] I imagine it's also tricky in all the panic to communicate to people that they need to jump individually, and the net is for people only: quote:In November 1910, a fire swept through a factory in Newark, New Jersey, killing 25 people. Among them were four girls who held onto each other when they jumped into a life net. They tore the net apart and were killed.[8] In the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on March 25, 1911, girls jumped into life nets from the ninth floor with their arms intertwined and the impact ripped the canvas and tore the springs from the frame, resulting in their deaths.[9] In all, 146 garment workers were killed in that fire. During the Hotel Polen fire in Amsterdam on May 9, 1977, firefighters could not successfully deploy a life net in a narrow, congested alley. When a life net was deployed in a more open area, some hotel guests threw their luggage into the net, and were then injured when they jumped. Others were injured when they hit the rim of the net. In all, 33 people died in that fire.[10]
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 07:20 |
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pookel posted:Didn't firefighters back in those days deploy some sort of trampoline for jumpers to land on? I swear this is what always happened in books I read as a kid. At the Winecoff they had nets but they only worked for up to 70 feet, anyone jumping above that simply broke the net.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 07:27 |
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Nckdictator posted:At the Winecoff they had nets but they only worked for up to 70 feet, anyone jumping above that simply broke the net. that'd still dump a lot of energy.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 07:29 |
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This photo won the Pulitzer Prize that year, taken by an amateur photographer. The jumper, Daisy McCumber, lived.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 09:09 |
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Speaking of fires in public building, this one killed 492 people, the deadliest nightclub fire in American history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoanut_Grove_fire Some bonus fires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois_Theatre_fire 602 people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Hills_Supper_Club_fire
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 09:58 |
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the future is WOW posted:I assume he meant the deadliest hotel fire in American history, since there are plenty of other building fires that killed many more. For example the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 people, the majority of them (123) being women and children. So every time you don't burn to death at work because your piece of poo poo bosses locked you in from the outside you can thank those folks. This is it happened on the fifth year anniversary of that Date Which Will Live in Infamy. So after the first year or so it's tragedy was mostly subsumed by the earlier one. Similar to if something really bad happened on 9/11 2006.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 10:19 |
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Cumslut1895 posted:that'd still dump a lot of energy. Would suck for the next guy in line though.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 12:18 |
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Safety Biscuits posted:Would suck for the next guy in line though. what kind of american are you
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 12:20 |
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TotalLossBrain posted:I used to work on a nuclear waste cleanup plant. Some of the radiation maps for the high-level waste facility showed up to 300,000 Rads/hr (3,000 Gy) in the black cells. Those were projections, but based on multiple decades of waste characterization so probably pretty decent projections. My dad used to work for the Nevada Test Site and call himself a "Mucker Man" because he had to clean up the muck left over from tests (he once drove a train that had a bomb on it). The government assured them they were safe and gave them some badge that would alert them if radiation levels got too high but I don't think he trusted it. My mom told me that he started to do his own laundry because he was afraid his clothes were too radioactive. My dad died last year of complications from emphysema and COPD at the age of 67. We have no way of knowing if his job was a factor because he smoked. His father was stationed in occupied Japan after WWII and until fall of 1946. He had to go to Hiroshima in October 1945 to help clean up. He also died of emphysema at the age of 64. But, again, he also smoked.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 15:07 |
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This link (given above) about the Winecoff fire is pretty interesting if you can get past the painful writing (it was written by a 17-year-old for a college class and it shows): http://bainbridgega.com/news/publish/article_6268.shtml The interesting bit: Some of the older boys from one high school were staying at a hotel down the street and had been visiting some girls from their class at this hotel shortly before the fire. The boys hid under the bed while the teacher scolded the girls for making too much noise, and then they returned to their own hotel. When the fire broke out, two of those girls, best friends, pinned their names to their coats and jumped out the window holding hands. They were among the earliest bodies identified because of this. The boys who were at the other hotel - one of whom was the boyfriend of one of the girls who jumped - had to identify their dead classmates.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 15:28 |
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Fire codes exist for a reason department: Yesterday a dance was held at an artists' space in a warehouse, the Oakland Ghost Ship. Because human occupancy, to say nothing of holding events open to the public, was illegal, there was (duh) no fire code inspection, no sprinklers, no marked exits. The second floor was reached by climbing up a stack of wooden pallets. As you can see from the pictures, the space was full of flammable objects, and walking through the space was an exercise in traversing a maze. There was a fire. So far, nine people are known to be dead, but officials say there may be up to 40 total deaths. reddit thread. This sort of thing happens every few years, because complying with building codes and fire codes is both expensive and time-consuming.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 20:45 |
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Terrible Opinions posted:This is it happened on the fifth year anniversary of that Date Which Will Live in Infamy. So after the first year or so it's tragedy was mostly subsumed by the earlier one. Similar to if something really bad happened on 9/11 2006. Whoops, I totally missed the significance of the date (much to my shame) and thought you meant it in terms of the amount of lives lost.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 21:11 |
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Fire codes exist for a reason department: Wow that place really did look like a deathtrap.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 21:20 |
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Hot Smart ARYAN Girl posted:Wow that place really did look like a deathtrap.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 21:24 |
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Hot Smart ARYAN Girl posted:Wow that place really did look like a deathtrap. It looks kind of neat, and also one that should only have like 5 people in it max.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 21:29 |
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Yeah that looks like an incredibly cool place to chill and listen to music in actually
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 21:34 |
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purple death ray posted:Yeah that looks like an incredibly cool place to chill and listen to music in actually I don't know... I'm not sure how many people left there still thinking it was a cool place.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 21:37 |
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Reading a bunch of wiki articles about fires in a row, it's depressing how often they talk about people "panicking and stampeding" towards the exits when the truth is more likely to be that people were just trying to get out an exit that was far too small for the number of people who needed to escape. I feel like it shifts the blame onto the people who were in the buildings. That Oakland place looks cool as hell, but not cool enough to die for.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 21:39 |
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Fire codes exist for a reason department: Jesus
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 21:41 |
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Fire codes exist for a reason department: The Facebook page for that event is certainly something in hindisite. Two posts from before the fire. quote:Hey gang, I know there's a lot going on both in our personal lives and in the greater context of the overall climate of everything seemingly going to poo poo - but if you have the time, I (and the other performers) would really appreciate if you could invite as many of your friends as possible and share this event on your page for maximum visibility. quote:the hair stylist for the rave cave salon has unfortunatley called in sick :*( The rest after the fire is horrifically tragic, people asking if others are safe, looking for the missing,etc. That stylist really dodged a bullet though.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 21:44 |
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I'm expecting that site to go down very soon, unless the owner is dead. Those pictures are a lawyer's dream.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 22:16 |
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Looks like a great place to chill with like 6 other people it looks like a bohemian apartment more than anything
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 22:31 |
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Like a movie setting that looks cool in theory but would entirely loving suck in reality.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 22:53 |
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Possibly been covered before in this long-rear end thread but I've been reading lately about Verdun in World War 1. AKA Hell on loving Earth.Voices from Verdun posted:Few stretches of land in Western Europe are as blood soaked as the Verdun battlefield, where 80 years ago 700,000 to 800,000 Frenchmen and Germans were killed, wounded or captured in perhaps the most terrible battle of the Great War. Extending from 21 February to 15 December 1916, it is the longest battle history has ever known. To this day, the land around Verdun is torn and scarred by the war History.com posted:Of the 800,000 casualties at Verdun, an estimated 70 percent were caused by artillery. The Germans launched two million shells during their opening bombardment—more than in any engagement in history to that point—and the two sides eventually fired between 40 and 60 million shells over the next ten months. Soldiers at Verdun posted:
And it just goes on and on for like 10 months, with hundreds of thousands of people dying in utterly hellish conditions for basically nothing at all. Bodies were mostly left out to rot because to try and reclaim them was suicide, so the unending artillery bombardment was constantly throwing up bits and pieces of corpses and showering you with them. You wouldn't be able to sleep for days, just waiting in torment for any one of these artillery shells to blow you to bits, or your officer to blow his whistle and order you over the top to almost certain death. And if you refused or were incapable of moving? HE'D execute you, you loving coward. It's no wonder so many people lost their minds. quote:"Those looking for words like "glory," "honor," and "patriotism" will not find them here; Verdun destroyed these concepts as it destroyed human lives-ruthlessly and eternally." Mackers has a new favorite as of 01:01 on Dec 4, 2016 |
# ? Dec 3, 2016 23:59 |
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The loving terrifying thing is that wasn't the last war in the world. Maybe this is a little pretentious, but to me the scariest thing imaginable is reading all that about Verdun and knowing that humanity collectively enthusiastically said "please sir, I want some more" over the near century since.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 00:24 |
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Never mind it being the battle to end all wars, it wasn't even the end of that war. They went on for two whole years after Verdun and Somme, which would have seemed to any rational mind to have proven the utter futility of it pretty effectively. Reminder that the doctrine for the time was called offensive attrition, i.e. quite literally let's jam the enemies guns with our bodies.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 00:39 |
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guy on reddit posted:
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 00:59 |
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Look at those second story windows, ugh. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7775651,-122.2268322,3a,51.7y,280.51h,92.55t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQLG_yLa1ERdZ_l-znbaw9w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 02:23 |
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Mackers posted:Verdun
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 03:09 |
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On top of all that it was a rave. So a number of people were on hallucinogens when it happened and almost everyone was in some way inebriated.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 04:13 |
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I've read again and again that the number one thing survivors have in common is that they instantly acted to save themselves. If you're the type to deliberate or freeze up, you gonna die.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 05:17 |
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Fire codes exist for a reason department: I live in Oakland, and the issue of "residential"/converted warehouses gets kind of complicated. It's pretty well known (although anecdotal) that the city is aware that there are a lot of people living in converted warehouses that aren't up to code. The problem is that if an inspector shows up and red tags the building, the current occupants will move out, and then almost immediately the place will start to fill up with more transient residents, e.g. the homeless, or crusters, or drug enterprises. This leads to a whole different set of problems, including increased crime, blight, and general bother for the neighbors, all of which is going on in a warehouse that is still not safe for habitation. The City of Oakland has, apparently, decided to look the other way on code violations because they find the second scenario more distasteful than the first (not to mention, city services are woefully underfunded, and I'm positive that there aren't enough inspectors to cover the whole city). I'm in no way trying to slam Oakland's code and fire inspectors--I worked in a warehouse in Oakland, and whenever we pulled a permit for a fundraiser, they required us to submit a whole plan and would show up during events to make sure that we were following it. I probably don't have to mention that the whole bay area is facing the dual problems of (1) not enough funding for a social safety net and (2) rapidly evaporating affordable housing, which leads to people living in unsafe converted buildings, which often leads to tragedy.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 05:55 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 03:38 |
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MrFellow posted:I live in Oakland, and the issue of "residential"/converted warehouses gets kind of complicated.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 06:02 |