Investigators looking into a series of suspicious predawn fires at housing construction sites in Oakland and Emeryville, including a massive blaze last week north of downtown Oakland, have not found evidence linking any of the incidents, officials said Monday.
A spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spoke as 22 agents from the bureau joined with local partners to probe the wreckage of Friday’s fire at 23rd and Valdez streets, where plans called for 196 market-rate apartments and 31,500 square feet of retail.
ATF crews positioned two mobile work stations in a fenced-off parking lot next to the burn site, now a block-long pile of blackened boards and charred debris. Agents conferred beneath blue tents and did an initial walk-through of the ruined building.
The cause of the fire is not known, but investigators have determined that three previous fires over the past 13 months were intentionally set: one that tore through an unfinished 41-unit apartment building on Lester Avenue in Oakland and two that gutted the same housing and retail complex in Emeryville.
“We don’t like to make any conclusions or assumptions,” ATF spokeswoman Alexandria Corneiro said of any relationship between the fires. “We just go where the evidence says, and there’s no evidence at this time.”
Federal investigators released surveillance images of a suspect in a May 13 fire in Emeryville at the Intersection, a $35 million mixed-use project on San Pablo Avenue on the Oakland border. The images show a man in dark clothing and a hood riding a bicycle and wearing a backpack in the middle of the night near the site.
But the suspect has not been directly linked to the other fires, including one last July at the same site in Emeryville, the ATF said.
Though the investigation into last week’s fire is just beginning, some local leaders and developers are suggesting the blaze may be part of a broader arson plot, with some speculating that new construction is being targeted as a protest against gentrification.
“There is a militant group of people who want to go back to the flawed policies of the past — it’s been proven that limiting the supply of new housing doesn’t bring down prices of housing,” said Michael Ghielmetti, president of Signature Development Group. “I don’t know if this is a crazy person or folks who are against new housing, but I can tell you that the end result is community loss.”
City Councilman Abel Guillen posted a tweet on Friday that said, “Burning down housing doesn’t help make #Oak housing more affordable.” Meanwhile, Rick Holliday, the developer of the twice-burned Intersection project, has long seen the fires as political attacks.
A representative for the Alta Waverly building on Valdez Street said Monday that the developer had drawn no conclusions about the cause of Friday’s inferno.
“It’s just too soon for us to make that determination now,” said Sam Singer, who is representing Wood Partners.
The developer turned over surveillance video to authorities Friday, according to Singer, and had not heard back about the progress of the investigation.
Also Monday, Oakland’s new police chief, Anne Kirkpatrick, confirmed she was among more than 700 residents displaced by the fire. She and her neighbors were evacuated due to fears that a construction crane burned in the inferno might collapse and crash into an adjacent apartment complex, or that flames would spread to surrounding structures.
“All is well,” Kirkpatrick said in a text message. “I was allowed 15 minutes like everyone else to gather a few things and leave.”
Wood Partners said 18 neighboring housing units were considered uninhabitable after the fire, and that the company, the city and the American Red Cross were working to help the residents.
The ATF has joined city and Alameda County investigators in the probes of all of the suspicious fires in the area. A $110,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the arsonist responsible for the fires in Emeryville and on Lester Avenue in Oakland.
In addition, authorities continue to seek a suspect in a 2012 arson at an unfinished senior housing complex near the West Oakland BART Station.
Investigators did not provide a timeline for their work in the most recent fire, but they said it could take weeks to sift through the rubble.
“They go through everything very carefully,” Corneiro said.
