When this first happened it actually fucked my mental health for about a month. I’ll come back to this.
Here is my take. In my professional life I oversee a local branch to a international company which is housed in a warehouse. We moved in when the building was brand new.
It is built up to code and our agreement states that when we leave that it is left in the same state that we moved in. Much like any rental/lease agreement. In the interim we are responsible for any changes we make and general maintenance. There are property mangers that fix issues that are not ours when they come up with the building but only when we report any issues. Otherwise property owners are very hands off.
I can only imagine the grief left in that community. I feel bad for everyone’s loss but I also think anyone who lived there had to know the risk in being there. This entire building, in the state it was from all the alterations, was a tragedy waiting to happen. Sadly, it happened when it was full of people.
Who I mostly feel for are the folks who went there for an event. People who probably didn’t really know what a death trap they were going into.
In my opinion although there is plenty of blame to go around most of it should be directed towards the people who ran the ghostship. They knew what that had done to that building was dangerous and if they didn’t then I don’t really know what to say. I’m not saying that they intended to cause the death of all those people but that doesn’t absolve them in their complicity.
I was once in a band where our jamspot was in the basement of a used bookstore. There was only one exit to upstairs and only one exit out of the building. One day it dawned on me that we sat under 2-3 tons of kindling(old used books) that if ever it caught fire while we were jamming loudly it could burn and collapse on us and we wouldn’t even see it coming. I brought it up to everyone but no one else was as concerned as me.
The thought of that happening used to give me actual nightmares. As it was, we jammed down there for 3 years without incident but I was always aware of that risk.