美国国家公共电台 NPR Deadly Fire In Oakland May Spur Crackdown On Off-The-Grid Artists' Spaces

Deadly Fire In Oakland May Spur Crackdown On Off-The-Grid Artists' Spaces

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: 

In Oakland, Calif., authorities have stopped looking for victims of the fire that broke out Friday night in an old warehouse¹. The death toll² stands at 36. Artists were living and working in the building, a place that wasn't fit to live in. The Bay Area has some of the highest rents in the country. And now, as Sandhya Dirks of KQED reports, artists are afraid they'll be pushed out.

SANDHYA DIRKS, BYLINE³: Smoke hung in the air for days in Oakland's largely Latino Fruitvale district. It's a neighborhood that is, like so much of the city, facing ripples⁴ of gentrification created by the Bay Area's tech boom. Carmen Brito lived in the now-destroyed warehouse known as the Ghost Ship. She barely got out with her life.

CARMEN BRITO: You can go three blocks, and you can see rows of tents of people who are homeless, and nobody wants to talk about that. Nobody wants to talk about the people who've been forced further and further out. San Francisco can't house artists anymore because it's so expensive. And they're asking us, why did you live this way? What other choice did we have?

DIRKS: But the story of artists' warehouses⁵ in Oakland is more complicated according to Adam Hatch. He has run off-the-grid spaces like this for years.

ADAM HATCH: The housing crisis did not kill these people. A lack of responsibility and oversight⁶ killed these people.

DIRKS: And Hatch says artists, queer and trans people, those on the margins⁷ gravitate towards these outsider housing situations by choice.

HATCH: We were in those spaces in the late '90s and in the 2000s.

DIRKS: Even though they may not be legal, Hatch says, they don't have to be dangerous. He says it's a beautiful, creative world, part of what makes Oakland special. But already, city officials like Councilman Noel Gallo in whose district the Ghost Ship was located are talking about cracking down.

NOEL GALLO: We recognize that we've - you know, should have been more assertive⁸ in the past. We've talked about it, and - but now we'll expedite that action.

DIRKS: The city says it wants to be friendly to artists but also to prevent dangerous living conditions. That sentiment has left residents of these live-work spaces in Oakland united not just in grief but also in anxiety about being displaced.

DARREN: Anger and fear mostly.

DIRKS: That's what Darren says the people who live alongside him are feeling now in his cavernous warehouse not far from where the Ghost Ship was located. He asked that we not use his last name because he's living illegally and fears being evicted⁹.

DARREN: They're going to twist what you say into something, you know, that's going to make it more difficult for us to stay in these spaces, that, you know - it could lead to a crackdown of these spaces.

DIRKS: The victims of the Ghost Ship fire have been made into scapegoats¹⁰, Darren says, as if living in a warehouse made them complicit in their own deaths. Darren has lived here for 20 years, and in that time, there have been two fires. No one was hurt, and they didn't spread.

DARREN: Somebody had candles. And there was, like, a candelabra, and they fell asleep. And they probably had tapestries¹¹ and things like that on the wall, which you notice there's none of that kind of stuff here.

DIRKS: None of that and also a new sprinkler system, industrial-sized pipes better than you might find in your average apartment building in every corner, even the tiny bathroom off Darren's bedroom.

DARREN: So every single space, they managed to get a sprinkler into the space, which is, you know, quite impressive, so...

DIRKS: Does that make you feel safer?

DARREN: Oh, yeah.

DIRKS: And these safety measures caused rent to rise but only slightly. Darren says that shows these spaces can be made safe from fire. But for residents here, after the Ghost Ship, they don't feel safe from being kicked out. For NPR News, I'm Sandhya Dirks in Oakland.

1 warehouse   

n.仓库；vt.存入仓库

参考例句：

• We freighted the goods to the warehouse by truck.我们用卡车把货物运到仓库。
• The manager wants to clear off the old stocks in the warehouse.经理想把仓库里积压的存货处理掉。

2 toll   

n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟)

参考例句：

• The hailstone took a heavy toll of the crops in our village last night.昨晚那场冰雹损坏了我们村的庄稼。
• The war took a heavy toll of human life.这次战争夺去了许多人的生命。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 ripples   

逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The moon danced on the ripples. 月亮在涟漪上舞动。
• The sea leaves ripples on the sand. 海水在沙滩上留下了波痕。

5 warehouses   

仓库，货栈( warehouse的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The whisky was taken to bonded warehouses at Port Dundee. 威士忌酒已送到邓迪港的保稅仓库。
• Row upon row of newly built warehouses line the waterfront. 江岸新建的仓库鳞次栉比。

6 oversight   

n.勘漏，失察，疏忽

参考例句：

• I consider this a gross oversight on your part.我把这件事看作是你的一大疏忽。
• Your essay was not marked through an oversight on my part.由于我的疏忽你的文章没有打分。

7 margins   

边( margin的名词复数 )； 利润； 页边空白； 差数

参考例句：

• They have always had to make do with relatively small profit margins. 他们不得不经常设法应付较少的利润额。
• To create more space between the navigation items, add left and right margins to the links. 在每个项目间留更多的空隙，加左或者右的margins来定义链接。

8 assertive   

adj.果断的，自信的，有冲劲的

参考例句：

• She always speaks an assertive tone.她总是以果断的语气说话。
• China appears to have become more assertive in the waters off its coastline over recent years.在近些年，中国显示出对远方海洋的自信。

9 evicted   

v.（依法从房屋里或土地上）驱逐，赶出( evict的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• A number of tenants have been evicted for not paying the rent. 许多房客因不付房租被赶了出来。
• They had evicted their tenants for non-payment of rent. 他们赶走了未交房租的房客。

10 scapegoats   

n.代人受过的人，替罪羊( scapegoat的名词复数 )v.使成为替罪羊( scapegoat的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• They were made the scapegoats for the misfire of the program. 他们成了那个计划失败的替罪羊。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Only some of the guards and a minor hotel employee, chosen as scapegoats, were imprisoned. 只有一些保镖和那个旅馆的小职员当了替罪羊，被关进了监狱。 来自辞典例句

11 tapestries   

n.挂毯( tapestry的名词复数 )；绣帷，织锦v.用挂毯（或绣帷）装饰( tapestry的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The wall of the banqueting hall were hung with tapestries. 宴会厅的墙上挂有壁毯。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The rooms were hung with tapestries. 房间里都装饰着挂毯。 来自《简明英汉词典》