Responding to the Ghost Ship warehouse fire puts the city in a bind

Two months ago, a warehouse in Oakland known as the “Ghost Ship” caught fire and burned, killing 36 people. It was being used as a live-and-work facility for people in the Bay Area arts community, and there were numerous building code violations in the building, on top of illegal occupancy, that contributed to the tragedy. Could an incident like the Ghost Ship fire happen in Seattle? Easy question: it absolutely could. The hard question, however, is what the city should do about it. And that was the subject of a two-part discussion in the Council’s Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development …

Continue reading