The Oakland, California warehouse housed an artist collective had “started off as a dream, an idea,” manager Derick Ion Almena told broadcaster NBC.
On Friday, the two-story building went up in flames, trapping dozens of partygoers attending a rave.
Firefighters said they do not expect to find any more bodies in the charred warehouse, with 85 percent of the structure searched and cleared as of early Tuesday.
Asked by NBC about his accountability in the episode, Almena asked incredulously: “Should I be held accountable? I can barely stand here right now.”
“I’m only here to say one thing, I’m incredibly sorry,” Almena said, adding that he normally slept in the building along with his three children but they had checked into a hotel while the party raged on.
“I signed a lease. I got a building that was to city standards supposedly,” he said.
“It started off as a dream, an idea, we would have a facility and venue that would host everything from at-risk youth to the gay community, to artists that couldn’t perform anywhere to performance art, alternative arts,” he said.
On Monday, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley told reporters her office had launched an investigation into the blaze at the so-called Ghost Ship building to determine whether anyone was criminally liable.
“The range of charges could be murder all the way to involuntary manslaughter,” she said, adding that the probe could take weeks.
Survivors have spoken of the speed with which the fire spread through the warehouse, with questions arising as to whether the building was properly equipped with sprinklers or smoke detectors.
Pete Veilleux, a friend of the building’s manager, told CNN Tuesday he had been approached about moving into the building but it was “just too risky for me. It was too scary, mainly for fire and for lack of privacy.”
“I speculate that people are desperate for housing, both for events and residences. When people get desperate, safety kind of drops off the list of priorities,” he said.
Oakland, a city of 420,000 that abuts San Francisco, was once deemed unsafe but is now home to a large population of professionals driven from the nearby tech hub by sky-high rent.
Responding to accusations that he profited from the rent and other events held in the space, Almena said: “This is not profit. This is loss. This is a mass grave.”
Oakland city officials acknowledged over the weekend that they had received a number of complaints about the warehouse and that inspectors had been there last month but left when no one answered.
Authorities said Tuesday that all but one of the victims have been either definitively or tentatively identified.