Northbay Uprising - Information for the liberated zones of the San Pablo Bay

2011-04-15 "50 Vallejo squatters displaced as building burns" by Carolyn Jones from "San Francisco Chronicle" newspaper
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/14/BAJ11J14JS.DTL]
A fire gutted the defunct Cadillac dealership in Vallejo Thursday, displacing about 50 homeless people who had taken up residence in the showroom and sales offices.
The fire started at about 1 p.m. Wednesday in the former repair shop of Bill Lang Cadillac and Pontiac on Sonoma Boulevard, but firefighters let it burn itself out because, they said, the building was too dangerous to enter.
The flames were finally extinguished around 6 a.m. Thursday, and work crews began demolishing the 1950s-style building a few hours later.
The fire started when sparks from a saw or grinder ignited trash in a garbage can and quickly spread. Vallejo fire spokesman Bill Tweedy said he believes homeless people were sawing metal beams to sell for scrap.
In fact, Tweedy said, the illicit denizens of the abandoned dealership had removed so many of the support beams that firefighters could not enter to douse the flames out of fear that the roof would collapse.
The conflagration was the fifth fire at the dealership in 1 1/2 years, he said.
"It was a hiss, like a rattlesnake," said Linda Espiritu, 57, who was in the building when the fire began.
Espiritu was among about a dozen other displaced homeless people who were sitting on the sidewalk across from the dealership after the fire. Some were local residents who lost their homes through foreclosure and, with nowhere else to go, moved into the vacant building, Tweedy said.
"This place was not much, but it was a sanctuary for us," Espiritu said. "It was shelter. It was home."
Espiritu and her cohorts had lived for about two years at the dealership, which closed about five years ago. The building lacked electricity and plumbing, but it was warm, dry and relatively safe, they said.
Residents had transformed the dealership - which once provided Vallejo's wealthiest residents with luxury autos - into a honeycomb of bedrooms, complete with propane stoves, generators, potted plants, cat litter boxes and even a pool table.
"We had a little community here," said Velvet Farnsworth, 48. "We kept it clean. We took care of it. It was great until the scrappers came."
In 2009 the city ordered the building demolished as a blight and safety hazard, Tweedy said. The owner, who lives in Southern California, had been cooperating with the city, but the demolition was delayed due to complications with removing the squatters, he said.
The homeless said they'll move on to other vacant buildings in Vallejo, of which there are many. The city has been battered by the recession, declaring bankruptcy in 2008 and struggling with high unemployment and foreclosure rates.
Other homeless encampments have sprung up in the former Toyota dealership and a shuttered Mervyn's.
"We don't have the manpower to check every vacant building in town," Tweedy said. "These people need a place to go, but they need a place with water, heat, electricity, bathrooms. They need to do it right, not keep breaking in to empty buildings."