Ableton Forum

The news is just filtering into Cape Town here

Sadness.

I hope no-one on this forum has lost anyone in the fire.

Its local news for me but I don’t know anybody who was there. I know somebody who lived in one of those former industrial buildings turned artist living spaces in that area in the early 00’s. I’m sure this tragedy is going to cause authorities to seriously crack down on those type living situations and given its borderline Silicon Valley I’m sure the property owners made a decision, either be lax on the building codes and let low income artists live there or drop some serious money to upgrade and take part in the valley real estate gold rush. Clearly they made the wrong decision that they didn’t think would lead to this and of course there will be more fallout for more artists trying to live their dream with limited affordable living options in this area.

As someone, who is involved in the Free Open Air scene in Berlin, (which is not against cracking one or the other chain that unlocks an empty warehouse ), this is incredibly sad news.

Our wishes certainly go out to everyone involved and all their friends and loved ones

Yes this will lead to a much harder crackdown on these sort of activities not just in California, but probably the world over.
Considering that any real underground art and culture only still exists because of such places, that is incredibly sad news.

But it has to be noted that not buying and keeping up-to-date fire extinguishers and blocking exit routes is not "sticking it to the man", but extremely careless

And the selfish Facebook posts of the group's leader make it just so much harder to take...

Lost three friends so far...

oblique strategies wrote:Lost three friends so far...

i'm really sorry for your loss.

that place looked fabulous inside and brought back some fond warehouse memories. a really terrible place to be stuck in a fire though.

Thank you

know friends who are devistated at the loss..The ghost ship is going to turn our events into ghost towns..lot of good people lost life for no fucking good reason at all..one kid 18 dam years old had been coming to our events too...havent really much left the house since it happened and may not for a while as it seems foolish to be partying when others are dead because of it..yeah..it sucks..

jamesalin wrote:know friends who are devistated at the loss..The ghost ship is going to turn our events into ghost towns..lot of good people lost life for no fucking good reason at all..one kid 18 dam years old had been coming to our events too...havent really much left the house since it happened and may not for a while as it seems foolish to be partying when others are dead because of it..yeah..it sucks..

That seems a bit extreme.
Unless you are at the parties you organize as cavalier with the safety of punters as they were, you have no reason to overreact this way.

Because after seeing more pictures from the place, it has become clear that there was a very good reason why this ended so catastrophically. This place was a death trap and an accident waiting to happen.
I mean this place had been reported to the city counsel for precisely this reason just weeks prior.

Let's look at what went wrong:

1: Second floor location with only one way up AND down. (and no further emergency exits)
2: Lots of blocked paths in the building and around it with random stuff and trash. (this was what the city counsel had been informed of)
3: Those stairs themselves were DIY constructions made from wood pallets.
4: No functioning fire extinguishers in a place with soooo much old wood. (and quite old electrical equipment, which it turns out was the likely fire starter)
(5: no sprinkler system. I give a slight pass on this one, as this was probably not in the hands of the party organizers, and was probably assumed to be in place)

If they would have solved any of those 4 bullet points it's very likely that everyone could have survived and would now just be bitching about a ruined party.

The lesson here is not to stop organizing "illegal" parties, but to be mindful of the safety of your guests.

Just my 2ct.