Speaker 1: Jessa heads up. This episode discusses death in a tragic fire.
Speaker 1: Take care of yourselves, and if you're a new listener,
Speaker 1: this is our ninth episode, make sure you start with
Speaker 1: episode one. It had been more than a year since
Speaker 1: I first started exploring the rails, but finally Ruby was
Speaker 1: about to come home. Ruby called and told me she
Speaker 1: was approaching San Francisco in the Jesus Metro, that car
Speaker 1: that she and her boyfriend were given by a devout
Speaker 1: Christian on their way through Washington. Along the way, they'd
Speaker 1: picked up a few passengers and another dog. The image
Speaker 1: of this vehicle crossing the Golden gate Bridge made me
Speaker 1: grin every time it popped into my mind. But there
Speaker 1: was no longer a home for Ruby to return to
Speaker 1: now that I had downsized for my apartment in Oakland
Speaker 1: was living in the barn, and I knew she wouldn't
Speaker 1: call me first, but at some point she would. When
Speaker 1: she did, Ruby said she already had a place to stay,
Speaker 1: a house near the railroad tracks in Oakland, the Woe Mansion.
Speaker 1: Her Rimmis were several women who had also gotten off
Speaker 1: the rails, at least for a while. A few days later,
Speaker 1: we went out to breakfast. She looked great, happy, healthy,
Speaker 1: and full of energy to begin her new life. It
Speaker 1: was almost unbelievable to be sitting with her at a
Speaker 1: cafe near jack London Square, hearing about her plans and
Speaker 1: how she needed to get a job, but she wanted
Speaker 1: no help. She could do it all herself. But after
Speaker 1: she'd been home two months, Ruby still hadn't answered a
Speaker 1: single question about her life on the rails. I didn't
Speaker 1: know anything more than what I'd been able to piece
Speaker 1: together during our sporadic phone calls when she was away. Instead,
Speaker 1: Ruby just patiently told me that I'd never understand, and
Speaker 1: she didn't want to explain. But every day I wondered
Speaker 1: if this was the morning I'd wake up to find
Speaker 1: that she'd left again. Honestly, I didn't see much reason
Speaker 1: she would stay. She had a soul destroying job that
Speaker 1: offered meager wages. Ruby was working as a peachypuff Girl,
Speaker 1: a freelance cigarette girl required to dress in a sexy
Speaker 1: Halloween costume as she took a tray of cigarettes, candy,
Speaker 1: and condoms around the nightclubs of San Francisco, being insulted
Speaker 1: in proposition by tech bros. Until the last call if
Speaker 1: this was the working world. I didn't see anything holding
Speaker 1: her to this side of the tracks. And then late
Speaker 1: in December we got the news. It was an unusually
Speaker 1: cold night in New Orlands. Squatters were blamed for a
Speaker 1: warehouse far that killed eight people. A couldaver dog searches
Speaker 1: the remains of an abandoned warehouse. They didn't know how
Speaker 1: many people were actually in the build, and were so
Speaker 1: badly burned that officials couldn't immediately determine the sexes or
Speaker 1: ages of the victims. We'd be called to tell me
Speaker 1: about the fire. She knew where the warehouse was and
Speaker 1: had met people staying there when she lived for a
Speaker 1: while in New Orleans. I could hear from her voice
Speaker 1: that Ruby was shaken. Eight of her peers had died,
Speaker 1: and when we got off the phone, I shut my
Speaker 1: eyes to absorb the news. When Ruby was out on
Speaker 1: the rail, I was most afraid she'd die in a
Speaker 1: squat fire. I'd had that nightmare too many times to count,
Speaker 1: and I thought about the parents of the eight who died.
Speaker 1: What were they going through? Instantly I wanted to go
Speaker 1: to New Orleans. Well, the news stopped short of any
Speaker 1: real specifics I knew better than to dismiss the ape
Speaker 1: who died as merely homeless. I knew how they died,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know how they had lived, what forces
Speaker 1: had pushed them on to the rails, and what had
Speaker 1: they left behind. If I could understand that, maybe I'd
Speaker 1: be able to answer the questions Ruby hadn't about life
Speaker 1: on the rails. But I'd never be allowed into this
Speaker 1: world unless I had someone to vouch for me, and
Speaker 1: the perfect person for that was Ruby. She'd stayed in
Speaker 1: New Orleans twice when she was on the rails. I
Speaker 1: called her back, explained that I wanted to report the
Speaker 1: story of the squat fire, and offered to pay her
Speaker 1: to be my research assistant. She surprised me with an
Speaker 1: enthusiastic yes. The stories of the squatters needed to be told,
Speaker 1: and this was a chance to be with her grieving community.
Speaker 1: So two weeks after the fire, we boarded our flight
Speaker 1: to New Orleans. I didn't want to hope for too much,
Speaker 1: but then I knew how the rails break your heart,
Speaker 1: and they've done it for many in New Orleans. I'm
Speaker 1: Denil Morton, and this is City of the Rails. It's
Speaker 1: cold combat down a new Orleans cont down a New Orleans.
Speaker 1: You gotta keep close cont go on home. We got
Speaker 1: said to go off home, cop said to go off home.
Speaker 1: Down palaces, doesn't right on to them, falling a fallen
Speaker 1: trails and if forgotten the song, did you guys have
Speaker 1: a memorial service here? It's kind of been an ongoing thing.
Speaker 1: People who stopped by and drop off things. I'm walking
Speaker 1: with Ruby and her friend Izzie, deeper and deeper into
Speaker 1: New Orleans ravaged Eighth Ward, one of the hardest hit
Speaker 1: by Hurricane Katrina. We set up a skate park over
Speaker 1: there five years after Katrina. The streets are still redded
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood is a ghost town. We make our
Speaker 1: way down North Pierre Street, pass boarded up houses next
Speaker 1: to a few occupied ones with tidy fenced in front yards.
Speaker 1: So yeah, everyone is graving really hard and in their
Speaker 1: own ways. You know. He lives across the street from
Speaker 1: where the warehouse used to be, and he wants to
Speaker 1: show us the memorial to the eight who died there.
Speaker 1: Right after the fire, the city bulldozed the wreck of
Speaker 1: the warehouse, and Azzie told me he watched as day
Speaker 1: by day groups of people came to the site to
Speaker 1: pay their respects. We walked toward the handmade cross erected
Speaker 1: in the empty field of ashes with flowers, candles, pieces
Speaker 1: of jewelry and a bull, burnt, remnants of clothing and books,
Speaker 1: and a few stuffed animals. Among the bits and pieces
Speaker 1: included in the memorial is he points out cans of
Speaker 1: alcohol left as tribute to those who died. That's notable
Speaker 1: in this hard drinking community, naturally. Actually, we're surprised there's
Speaker 1: so many beers and four locos and things left here
Speaker 1: on opened for weeks. You know, it was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks like they're all gone now, but
Speaker 1: it's cool. It'll lasted so long, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: is he Ruby and I stand around the cross holding
Speaker 1: hands to observe a moment of silence for those who
Speaker 1: were lost in the fire. The dead, age seventeen to
Speaker 1: twenty nine, were from Wisconsin, Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: and New Orleans around us. The terrible loss of the
Speaker 1: Squat Fire still hung in the cold winter air, but
Speaker 1: not everyone was sympathetic to the tragedy, which was the
Speaker 1: biggest fire in the city in thirty years. Some called
Speaker 1: to tighten the vagrancy and busking laws discourage these people
Speaker 1: from staying in New Orleans. Here at the memorial, as
Speaker 1: we bowed our heads to the deceased, I was grateful
Speaker 1: that my daughter was at my side and I was
Speaker 1: holding her hand, although this is a bit burned this stuff.
Speaker 1: After the visit to the memorial, I dropped Ruby off
Speaker 1: at a friend's apartment in the Ninth Ward and drove
Speaker 1: across town to my friend's place in the Upscale Garden District.
Speaker 1: My plan with Ruby was we'd meet every day in
Speaker 1: the French Quarter and go visit her friends in the
Speaker 1: Eighth and ninth Wards. But time down here feels different.
Speaker 1: Days in New Orleans didn't really get started until two pm,
Speaker 1: a bit off kilter for someone like me who gets
Speaker 1: up before sunrise, right around the time Ruby and her
Speaker 1: friends were going to bed. So when we met for
Speaker 1: breakfast the first time in the French Quarter, Ruby suggested
Speaker 1: we have breakfast tachos. Nacho is made from tater tots.
Speaker 1: It's two o'clock, I'm eating breakfast and it's tachos. New
Speaker 1: Orleans was already flipping me on my head while I
Speaker 1: was down here. I wanted to learn more about how
Speaker 1: the Traveling Kids fit into the city of New Orleans,
Speaker 1: so I looked up Chris Rose, former columnists for the
Speaker 1: New Orleans Times Pickieyune. For a time, Chris had been
Speaker 1: the face of New Orleans. His columns on the aftermath
Speaker 1: of Hurricane Katrina became a best seller called One Dead
Speaker 1: in the Attic. But two years ago, Chris left New
Speaker 1: Orleans after thirty five years. He was another person who
Speaker 1: deliberately detached himself from the city when the conventional world
Speaker 1: got to be too much for him. So when I
Speaker 1: tracked Chris down, he was living on a campsite in
Speaker 1: a national forest in Mississippi. He's arranged a life were
Speaker 1: the only two bills he pays are his cell phone
Speaker 1: and his car insurance, a life led with very little money,
Speaker 1: not unlike the hoboes I was going to ask him about.
Speaker 1: And although Chris chose to leave the city behind, he
Speaker 1: understood why the Traveling Kids are drawn to New Orleans.
Speaker 1: You can still hear the languid pace of life in
Speaker 1: his voice. Because it's easy, it's very comfortable place to live. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, the most Caribbean, it's the northernmost Caribbean city, right,
Speaker 1: and it is. Its pace of life is one that's
Speaker 1: very comfortable. You can be ambitious, but you don't have
Speaker 1: to be You can chase money, but you don't have
Speaker 1: to to live a comfortable and successful life. There vious
Speaker 1: rotten rails. I could see it'd be very easy to
Speaker 1: stay there because the weather accommodates it, and the community
Speaker 1: is large. You know, they've got their own microeconomy going on.
Speaker 1: Is very favorable to staying in a city open to
Speaker 1: the offbeat, the eccentric, and the unconventional. High season for
Speaker 1: the Dirty Kids starts in the fall and October, writers
Speaker 1: start heading south to New Orleans from crumbling industrial cities
Speaker 1: in the Rest Belt. It's a pretty comfortable place to
Speaker 1: spend the winter, and many set up in New Orleans
Speaker 1: until spring. Everyone knows the parties start Halloween night. New
Speaker 1: Orleans in the wintertime is just like you know, it's
Speaker 1: like almost like you're at the Festival of Dirty Kids.
Speaker 1: There's literally like hundreds of kids and people who travel
Speaker 1: that Scott Michad the basis for Profane Sass, the band
Speaker 1: that plays our theme song, Wayfaring Stranger. As it happened,
Speaker 1: Scott his girlfriend Becky and the whole band. We're in
Speaker 1: New Orleans in the weeks before the Squat fire. Originally
Speaker 1: they intended to stay only a few days, but New
Speaker 1: Orleans has a way of getting you to forget your intentions.
Speaker 1: It's like even walking through the French Quarter or Decatur Street,
Speaker 1: twenty minute walk, but you'd run it into other people
Speaker 1: you had met, and you'd sit there and you talk
Speaker 1: and you'd share. Even just like walking from the squat
Speaker 1: down to play music back could be like a seven
Speaker 1: hour thing, and we are all just so like follow
Speaker 1: the wind and follow the signs and follow the omen
Speaker 1: let the universe aside where we're going the day. And
Speaker 1: for Scott and his bandmates, it wasn't just the pace
Speaker 1: or the conviviality, it was the music. There was just
Speaker 1: so many great street performers down there, so you kind
Speaker 1: of like join forces with other musicians for a little while,
Speaker 1: and sometimes by the end of the night you have
Speaker 1: fourteen people all playing these songs that we kind of
Speaker 1: all know. Morgan Nuselton, who we met in the episode
Speaker 1: about Women on the Rails, had another name for New
Speaker 1: Orleans party city, like this dark, mysterious city, like we
Speaker 1: are a part of that culture. People that are coming
Speaker 1: to visit loved the ship out of us. They loved
Speaker 1: like the old tiny folk, like playing their music for musicians.
Speaker 1: New Orleans held a special appeal. They felt the love
Speaker 1: from some of the city and its visitors. But it
Speaker 1: was a different story with the police who tried to
Speaker 1: push hoboes to the edge of town. Because when you
Speaker 1: go to the French Quarter, you got about three days.
Speaker 1: The cops basically say like, we're going to continue to
Speaker 1: give you tickets, but if you go to the ninth
Speaker 1: four or the eighth ward we walk, that's with you.
Speaker 1: So it pushes us over there so that we can
Speaker 1: get the hell out of the nice part in town.
Speaker 1: So New Orleans could be easy living with hard looks
Speaker 1: from some of the locals. While Profane and SaaS was
Speaker 1: in town, Scott and Becky experienced the aggression of people
Speaker 1: who didn't embrace the dirty kids. I remember specifically this
Speaker 1: moment the Profane Sasas was playing on the street and
Speaker 1: I was taking care of the dogs, and this man
Speaker 1: in his late forties, you know, kind of business dress,
Speaker 1: walked by and so like full of anger and hate,
Speaker 1: leans down over us and throws down like ten or
Speaker 1: twenty dollars, and it's like in our face and says
Speaker 1: this is for the dogs so they can eat, not
Speaker 1: for you, and walks off. So even in New Orleans
Speaker 1: it was hobo's versus society, and resentment from the locals
Speaker 1: meant that if you wanted to stay in town and
Speaker 1: housed up, you had to find the right neighborhood. So
Speaker 1: Ruby and I left the French Quarter and headed back
Speaker 1: to the eighth and ninth wards. Here, on the edge
Speaker 1: of the city, forty three thousand homes stood abandoned since
Speaker 1: the hurricane, a quarter of New Orleans housing stock, which
Speaker 1: made the neighborhood a perfect destination for squatters. We betook
Speaker 1: me to a squat on the far edge of the
Speaker 1: eighth Ward, where her friends Aaron and Momo lived. After
Speaker 1: a few days of squat shopping, breaking into ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen empty houses, they found the right wine and they
Speaker 1: were living in. We didn't do anything to do it
Speaker 1: except we sweat, and then I started finding furniture. Aaron
Speaker 1: and Momo didn't need much to survive. Mamo pointed to
Speaker 1: three dollars sitting on the crate next to her bed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: three dollars and chains that I've had for a week
Speaker 1: and a half. With just three bucks, anyone could furnish
Speaker 1: a life here and just as quickly abandon it. But
Speaker 1: in this squat, Aaron and Momo had settled in for
Speaker 1: a while, even decorating it on the cheap in a
Speaker 1: way that I loved. They'd gone to second hand stories
Speaker 1: and bought pairs of sparkly stiletto heels and balanced a
Speaker 1: shoe over each doorway in the house. This was a
Speaker 1: remarkable turnaround for Momo to find a home in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: Last time she was here with her boyfriend. They swear
Speaker 1: they'd never return. How Come it was so hard last
Speaker 1: time because we were doing two main drugs all the time,
Speaker 1: and his dog got hit by a car and almost died,
Speaker 1: and I went to jail. Just a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: is cursed. We're never going back. But I've been telling
Speaker 1: them about everything I've been doing here, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let New Orleans win. You know. We
Speaker 1: sat on the floor of Aaron and Momo's squat, me
Speaker 1: on a mattress and Ruby in a tilted dining room chair.
Speaker 1: I was surprised how comfortable we were in this odd
Speaker 1: situation with me peppering them with so many questions, how
Speaker 1: did they survive when they got housed up, how did
Speaker 1: they structure their days? And what kept them here? I
Speaker 1: was asking them everything I'd wanted to know about Ruby,
Speaker 1: and Ruby never interrupted, only spoke up when she wanted
Speaker 1: to draw a boundary around what I could ask her. Friends.
Speaker 1: Questions about specific yards and how to hop a train
Speaker 1: were off limits. We talked until the sun went down
Speaker 1: at five, but my New Orleans education was only beginning.
Speaker 1: Later that night, we all met up again to go
Speaker 1: to a birthday party at the Saint Rock Tavern. The
Speaker 1: party was for Ugly John, who appeared to have been
Speaker 1: on the party bus since the day before. He was
Speaker 1: swaying around drunk off his ass with about thirty dollars
Speaker 1: and one dollar bills pinned to his shirt front and back,
Speaker 1: a New Orleans birthday tradition. Was a little bummed on
Speaker 1: his birthday, though, because he just broke in the bar's
Speaker 1: toilet and couldn't remember how all he knew was most
Speaker 1: of his birthday money would now go to paying off
Speaker 1: the bar owner. I was right in the middle of
Speaker 1: the rolling party, ordering pictures of beer, which was making
Speaker 1: table pretty popular. In return, I was constantly being offered
Speaker 1: free drinks, free drugs, and free homemade tattoos. Close to midnight,
Speaker 1: the girls wanted to teach me how to twerk. Why,
Speaker 1: because we all headed to a club that was hosting
Speaker 1: Booty Night. Tworking was practically a part of the cover charge.
Speaker 1: When we got there, the club was packed in this
Speaker 1: pre pandemic ecstasy. The saxe player left the stage and
Speaker 1: walked among the crowd, eyes shut, with people touching his
Speaker 1: arms as he played. Everything I do is going to
Speaker 1: be funky from now on, And yes there was twerking,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad there were no cameras there to record
Speaker 1: this moment. It was around two when I pulled myself
Speaker 1: away from the club, even though my new friends begged
Speaker 1: me to stay. I drove across town through the fog
Speaker 1: to my friend's place. When I got there, I drunkenly
Speaker 1: fumbled with my keys and opened the apartment door. There
Speaker 1: in the doorway to an empty apartment, the intoxication of
Speaker 1: Booty Nights suddenly faded and everything from the day started
Speaker 1: to hit me. I was thinking about standing by the
Speaker 1: memorial holding hands with Izzy and Ruby, about the parents
Speaker 1: who'd lost their kids, and the way Momo and Alana lived,
Speaker 1: and about ugly John, and the fun I had with
Speaker 1: my daughter and her friends. With these highs and lows,
Speaker 1: all in one day, I sat on the couch with
Speaker 1: a television on Catatonic. I was fully seeing the life
Speaker 1: of a traveling kid, not having someone describe it to me.
Speaker 1: What was I supposed to make of this town? It
Speaker 1: ended up being Chris Rose who characterized it best. Like Momo,
Speaker 1: he'd struggled trying to leave the city. Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of shadows in Nuance. There's this huge
Speaker 1: carnival of life there in the presence for everybody to
Speaker 1: see and to participate in. But all around them, all
Speaker 1: around the bright lights and carnival of the French quarner,
Speaker 1: on all sides of it are the shadows, dark streets,
Speaker 1: empty buildings, open fields, blocks and blocks of areas that
Speaker 1: are unpeopled and unpoliced. And the train yards, of course
Speaker 1: are right there. And it's easy to move in those shadows.
Speaker 1: If you just float along the sidewalks not bugging anybody,
Speaker 1: nobody will notice you. There's a lot of invisible people
Speaker 1: in New Orleans Let's put it this way, if you
Speaker 1: were wanted by the law, where would you go to
Speaker 1: go off the grid? I mean it's been this way
Speaker 1: for not decades, but for centuries. In New Orleans, it's
Speaker 1: it's where people go to go off the grid. You know,
Speaker 1: there's always the joke that the guy passing on the
Speaker 1: streets a serial or who knows people just go there
Speaker 1: to disappear. They always have. Chris was describing a dark
Speaker 1: kind of New Orleans magic. The city had an air
Speaker 1: of mystery mixed in with the fog. When they could
Speaker 1: envelop you like a cloak. Was the perfect city for
Speaker 1: the traveling community. As I tried to sleep, my ears
Speaker 1: still ringing with the saxophone music, I knew that tomorrow
Speaker 1: I'd need to get down to business. I'd meet up
Speaker 1: with Ruby and start figuring out what happened that night
Speaker 1: in the warehouse. Ruby would lead me to people who'd
Speaker 1: seen the fire. I was starting to get my grounding
Speaker 1: in New Orleans. I could see how the warehouse, squat
Speaker 1: and its residence fit into the fabric of the city.
Speaker 1: I wanted to understand as much as I could about
Speaker 1: the warehouse and the day's leading up to the fire,
Speaker 1: and for what I gathered, the squat was a special play.
Speaker 1: The people who helped me understand why were the members
Speaker 1: of Profane SaaS, the band who performs our theme song.
Speaker 1: They were among the last people to stay in the warehouse.
Speaker 1: For years. The band had traveled from show to show
Speaker 1: by hopping trains, so a whole group of them rode
Speaker 1: down from Pittsburgh. When they arrived, they heard about the
Speaker 1: perfect place to stay, right by the railroad tracks and
Speaker 1: within walking distance of the French border. People would sleep
Speaker 1: in the field nearby just to be near it. What
Speaker 1: made this squat so special? For one thing, it was huge. Kiwi,
Speaker 1: Profane Sasa's banjo player told me there was plenty of
Speaker 1: room for the band and their friends. Yeah, it had
Speaker 1: these huge doors that we'd all hang out on. It
Speaker 1: was like right by the train yard, and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is perfect. Probably thirty by fifty or sixty foot
Speaker 1: wood warehouse. There was a big room in the middle,
Speaker 1: and it was clear this place was known to the
Speaker 1: riding community. Becky told me you only needed to look
Speaker 1: at the walls to see if your friends had passed through.
Speaker 1: Murals tags everyone would leave their mark, and so it
Speaker 1: was almost like just this history of who was here,
Speaker 1: A lot of good messages. He got what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Profane's has set me a video they took of the
Speaker 1: whole setup Ye family right now and it slung over
Speaker 1: a roof. Being was a twenty foot swing that swept
Speaker 1: slowly across the main room through the open warehouse doores.
Speaker 1: You could see the trains in the yard. It was
Speaker 1: super fun to swing on that, and while you were swinging,
Speaker 1: the big open doors were there so people would be
Speaker 1: gathering and talking. Yeah, it was really nice here in
Speaker 1: the edge of ten. They partied into the night, playing music,
Speaker 1: swinging and dancing. It was a squatter's paradise without any
Speaker 1: fear of getting busted. It was definitely one of tho
Speaker 1: neighborhoods where people don't call police, you know, so like
Speaker 1: we didn't even worry about that. Having seventy or eighty
Speaker 1: people out there at the warehouse, you know, we didn't worry.
Speaker 1: Everyone has such vivid memories of the warehouse. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't an easy place to stay warm. The band had
Speaker 1: traveled south in search of warm weather, but ki We
Speaker 1: said it was surprisingly cold when they got there, with
Speaker 1: the moisture of like how what New Orleans was. The
Speaker 1: nights are super cold, so we all had sleeping bags
Speaker 1: and stuff, and we'd probably, you know, we all cuddled
Speaker 1: together and we had dogs and kept us warm. This
Speaker 1: weather made New Orleans a lot less welcoming than past winters.
Speaker 1: For Becky, who was on the rails for the first time,
Speaker 1: the cold was unlike anything she'd felt before. Even though
Speaker 1: New Orleans pulled so many of us because it definitely
Speaker 1: was not as cold as the northern cities. Still, when
Speaker 1: you are constantly outside, it's hard for your whole body
Speaker 1: to maintain heat. It just feels colder. The draft, the
Speaker 1: trains going by. There's no insulation in the room, there's
Speaker 1: no insulation in the floor. You felt it in your bones.
Speaker 1: This weather made New Orleans a lot less welcoming than
Speaker 1: past winters. For Becky, who was on the rails for
Speaker 1: the first time, the cold was unlike anything she'd felt before.
Speaker 1: It's different when you are living on the street and
Speaker 1: the only time you get into a heated space is
Speaker 1: when you have enough money to buy a cup of
Speaker 1: coffee and go into a coffee shop. You know, because
Speaker 1: you cannot take regular showers because you're not cleaning your
Speaker 1: clothes regularly. Society doesn't want you in public spaces. So
Speaker 1: in the open field next to the warehouse, the band
Speaker 1: built huge bonfires every night and felt a deep chill
Speaker 1: when they had to return to the warehouse to sleep,
Speaker 1: and just the feeling of the fire and then away
Speaker 1: from the fire like that distinct temperature difference is a
Speaker 1: real but the cold didn't get profanees asked down. The
Speaker 1: band spent over month there hanging out, meeting people, playing music,
Speaker 1: and of course they couldn't leave Party City without one
Speaker 1: final celebration. So the night before the band was leaving
Speaker 1: to go to a gig in Texas, they had a
Speaker 1: big send off. Right before we'd left. We had this
Speaker 1: huge party because we had been there for you know,
Speaker 1: some months or weeks, and so we had this big
Speaker 1: party where like sixty or seventy people came. We had
Speaker 1: a big old bonfire in the sand. You know. It
Speaker 1: was a huge party with lots of travelers gathered around
Speaker 1: the bonfire, and almost everyone carried an instrument. So the
Speaker 1: whole thing with the traveling community is acoustic instruments, because
Speaker 1: you can travel with an acoustic instrument, you can bust
Speaker 1: with an acoustic instrument, so they'll be usually like, you know,
Speaker 1: acoustic guitar, maybe an acoustic bass, banjo, washed board, fiddle, jugs,
Speaker 1: a lot of musical saws, a lot of accordions, spoons, spoon, trump, harmonica.
Speaker 1: So probably half of the traveling kids carried instruments kind
Speaker 1: of what you do. And it was part of the
Speaker 1: community so much, and so at the end of the night,
Speaker 1: everybody will do like a big jam session, maybe five
Speaker 1: people or fifteen people or twenty people. So everyone was
Speaker 1: playing music, dancing around the bonfire. But as the night
Speaker 1: went on, temperatures started to drop. Scott told me he
Speaker 1: and their lead singer Thomas, notice some people in the
Speaker 1: warehouse trying to find a way to bring the fire inside.
Speaker 1: I remember somebody's like, yeah, we should bring it in there,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I remember both me and Thomas where it's
Speaker 1: just like, do not do that. That is a wooden floor,
Speaker 1: it'll burn down. And I remember hearing Thomas and Scott
Speaker 1: try and advice in the sand pit, this is the
Speaker 1: safe place for it to be, you know, and trying
Speaker 1: to provide that guidance to the other community members and
Speaker 1: friends that that was the safer place to have it,
Speaker 1: so no fire came inside while Profane's Ass was staying
Speaker 1: at the warehouse, but they left the day after the party.
Speaker 1: The band said goodbye to the people they'd gotten close
Speaker 1: to in the squat, especially Nikki and Sammy. Nikki had
Speaker 1: come south with them from Pittsburgh and fallen in love
Speaker 1: with Sammy, who brought them to the warehouse. Profane's ask
Speaker 1: promised they'd be back before winter was done, but they
Speaker 1: never saw them again. And when Scott first heard about
Speaker 1: the tragedy, he thought back to that conversation about the bonfire.
Speaker 1: I remember very vividly thinking about that a lot. That's
Speaker 1: where my mind would always take me, like, oh, how
Speaker 1: to happen? Like I didn't have a doubt that that's
Speaker 1: what happened. A week after Profane's Ass left, the Knights
Speaker 1: were still freezing in New Orleans, so people continued trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to bring the fire inside. That
Speaker 1: was the key decision and one I wanted to know
Speaker 1: more about. Most of those who died in the warehouse
Speaker 1: were experienced travelers. Two in particular, Katie Simmoner and her
Speaker 1: boyfriend Jeff Gertz, had a lot of outdoor skills, so
Speaker 1: how was this decision made with all the time I'd
Speaker 1: spent trying to convince travelers to speak with me. In
Speaker 1: New Orleans, things were different With Ruby at my side.
Speaker 1: Everyone was talking and she was introducing me to people
Speaker 1: who knew more about the fire. One night we went
Speaker 1: to a cook out of the squat in the eighth Ward,
Speaker 1: where hoboes were jousting on tall bikes, like six to
Speaker 1: ten feet tall, made of two bicycle frames welded together.
Speaker 1: The knights of the Road squared off on the street
Speaker 1: fifty feet apart, circling until someone guild go. Then they
Speaker 1: took off toward each other full speed, broom handles blazing,
Speaker 1: trying to knock the other guy off. It was brutal.
Speaker 1: One guy needed first aid After the battle. The warriors
Speaker 1: grabbed chicken legs from the grille and licked their hands
Speaker 1: when they were done. But when dinner was served it
Speaker 1: was a different story. As a visiting mom, I got
Speaker 1: a lot of respect from the travelers. Some one produced
Speaker 1: a chair from one of the squats just for me,
Speaker 1: and another brought the only plate and actual silverware. All
Speaker 1: of these months I'd been trying to get these people
Speaker 1: to talk to me, to understand their world, and here
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of it all, treated like
Speaker 1: a queen. This evening was chaotic. Joy I was having
Speaker 1: a great time in these unstructured days, one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty degrees from my regular life, and it was the
Speaker 1: first time since Ruby left that I felt truly free.
Speaker 1: As dusk settled in, the streets were dark without street lights.
Speaker 1: The only light we had came from the porchlights of
Speaker 1: nearby houses. Ruby came over to tell me she'd found
Speaker 1: one of the survivors of the fire. This woman had
Speaker 1: been living at the warehouse, but she happened to be
Speaker 1: out the night of the fire, and she was willing
Speaker 1: to talk to me. This woman didn't want to be named,
Speaker 1: but she told me she'd lived at the warehouse for
Speaker 1: a full month before the fire. The survivor remembered how
Speaker 1: the squad he was prepared to bring the fire inside.
Speaker 1: It was a giant steel barbecue pet that we upset up,
Speaker 1: and we had nailed cargated middle siding underneath it and
Speaker 1: a perimeter around it to make sure that he didn't
Speaker 1: dry out the boards and then catch on fire. You know,
Speaker 1: we took precautions, he said, clear Just how many train
Speaker 1: hoppers were in the house that night or exactly when
Speaker 1: and how the fire started, but it spread through the
Speaker 1: main room fast. Her friend Byron, was passed out on
Speaker 1: the main floor and woke up when he saw the
Speaker 1: flames crawling up the walls. Meanwhile, the survivor was walking home,
Speaker 1: turned the corner and saw the warehouse ablaze. The door
Speaker 1: burst open and Byron ran out. He came to and
Speaker 1: could barely even find his way out. He couldn't even
Speaker 1: get in stall. Yeah, very said he heard a few
Speaker 1: people in bang me and trying to get out somewhere,
Speaker 1: non responsive. He was pretty hysterical at the time, So
Speaker 1: I just, you know, I like ran up and was
Speaker 1: like he was in there, and he's in there, and
Speaker 1: he was just like everyone you know, standing outside the fire.
Speaker 1: They were powerless to help their friends screaming inside the warehouse.
Speaker 1: As we stood on the steps of the building, the
Speaker 1: survivor showed me her palm. She tried to open the
Speaker 1: door to the warehouse to save her friends, but it
Speaker 1: was so hot that it burned her hand. As the
Speaker 1: survivor told this story, the barbecue was escalating. There was
Speaker 1: a wrestling match on the asphalt and I heard some
Speaker 1: beer bottles shattering on the sidewalk. Then I heard the sirens.
Speaker 1: Someone must have called the cops. Everyone was scattering. I
Speaker 1: saw Ruby running toward me, waving her arms. We needed
Speaker 1: to go. She grabbed my hand and we sprinted toward
Speaker 1: the rental car. Ruby told me to take a left
Speaker 1: and I floored it. We zig zagged through the eighth ward,
Speaker 1: with Ruby calling out evasive action, laughing and cursing like
Speaker 1: girlfriends on a spree. I dropped her off at a
Speaker 1: friend's house with a hug, and started on my confused
Speaker 1: way home. I was disoriented and ended up driving all
Speaker 1: over the city, round and round, trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of everything I was learning. The next day, Ruby was
Speaker 1: flying back to Oakland. How would I navigate this world
Speaker 1: without her? When she left a graduation, I thought she
Speaker 1: split because she didn't love me or trust me, But
Speaker 1: in New Orleans she showed me I was wrong about that.
Speaker 1: It was clear she trusted me when she introduced me
Speaker 1: to her friends, and while I was sorry to see
Speaker 1: her go, I was sticking around for a few more days.
Speaker 1: I wanted to find out more about those who died
Speaker 1: and start tracking down their families. A few of whom
Speaker 1: were in New Orleans. Plus, I was meeting with the
Speaker 1: New Orleans Fire inspectors, the people who'd walked through the
Speaker 1: smoking ruins of the warehouse. What could they tell me
Speaker 1: about the origins of this tragedy. On a Sunday afternoon
Speaker 1: in the French Quarter, I walked down Royal Street past
Speaker 1: Jackson Square on my way to New Orleans Fire Department headquarters.
Speaker 1: At last, I'd tracked down the man who was first
Speaker 1: on the scene investigating the fire, and got him to
Speaker 1: agree to an interview. The week before, i'd reported with Ruby,
Speaker 1: But this interview I was doing solo. She was back
Speaker 1: in Oakland, and I was already missing the comfort of
Speaker 1: having her beside me. So the whole walk Ruby was
Speaker 1: all I could think about. I imagined her on each
Speaker 1: street corner and wished she'd pop out of the place.
Speaker 1: We got tachos. Then I heard it was that Ruby's
Speaker 1: song window sill. I changed course and followed my ears.
Speaker 1: Could she still be here? That's not possible, but then
Speaker 1: it's New Orleans. I turned the last corner and found
Speaker 1: two young women, one singing and playing the ukulele, and
Speaker 1: her friend on the saw. Not Ruby. I was proud.
Speaker 1: Ruby had only traveled for a year and a half,
Speaker 1: but in her two stints in New Orleans, she left
Speaker 1: behind this song, a bit of beauty that endured, and
Speaker 1: what was true when Ruby was a little girl was
Speaker 1: still true here. Joey's left me wanting more. I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask the musicians if they knew her, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't keep the fire department waiting. Wow Bey. I arrived
Speaker 1: at the central fire station to speak with Wayne Regis
Speaker 1: and his boss to Vision Chief Albert Thomas, to learn
Speaker 1: what they knew about what caused the fire. They showed
Speaker 1: me to the back conference room, where Deputy Chief Regis
Speaker 1: described investigating the scene, setting up lights around the steaming
Speaker 1: hulk of the warehouse, and navigating his way atop the
Speaker 1: dripping embers. The floor had already been burned through, there
Speaker 1: was no roof, there, wonderwalls, and the only thing that
Speaker 1: was really left standing was quote unquote the office area
Speaker 1: where most of identified decease people were. Regis is a
Speaker 1: careful man who quibbles over the meaning of words and
Speaker 1: doesn't agree easily with someone else's assumptions. So I read
Speaker 1: the report and it said that the fire had started
Speaker 1: from what was like a cooking pit or some kind
Speaker 1: of a metal I didn't say that, the news said that. No.
Speaker 1: I think that is possible and it is highly likely.
Speaker 1: The thing was there were other people who had escaped
Speaker 1: the warehouse who Regis wasn't able to interview, so he
Speaker 1: never signed off on the cause of the fire. Something
Speaker 1: that struck me while talking to these guys was the
Speaker 1: very things that made the squad attractive to the travelers
Speaker 1: agitated the firefighters. Everything about this lifestyle and care and
Speaker 1: endangerous everything about to have buildings that blue utilities. No
Speaker 1: one's living there. It's been abandoned since Katrina all before.
Speaker 1: The inspectors couldn't be sure what caused the fire. There
Speaker 1: were so many other hazards in the warehouse. Maybe someone
Speaker 1: forgot to put out the fire before bed. The embers
Speaker 1: threw off sparks and the floorboards of the warehouse ignited,
Speaker 1: starting the blaze. Or could it have been arson Someone
Speaker 1: who didn't like the dirty kids hanging around New Orleans
Speaker 1: could have set the fire. Two unknown people ran out
Speaker 1: of the warehouse as the fire grew. But in some way,
Speaker 1: the cause of the fire didn't matter. It was the
Speaker 1: conditions in the warehouse, all the dangers that lurked in
Speaker 1: the shadows beyond the swing, the mural on the wall,
Speaker 1: and the bonfire. I asked Thomas and Regis if they
Speaker 1: could speak to the traveling community about this, what would
Speaker 1: they say? There is inherent dangers involved with every aspect
Speaker 1: of this lifestyle in a structure you have no legal
Speaker 1: right to be there. Make them, you know, really aware
Speaker 1: of that. I know they're all connected to someone, They're people.
Speaker 1: I asked Regions if he had anything to add. His
Speaker 1: starchiness and exactitude faded as he searched for what to say.
Speaker 1: Clearly our conversation had taken him back to that dark
Speaker 1: morning in the warehouse. At first, he was unable to
Speaker 1: look at me as he answered, I mean, I necesarily
Speaker 1: have anything to state, but I have questions as as
Speaker 1: in other places that you come from so terrible, so
Speaker 1: diversion off of what you considered to be utopian life,
Speaker 1: that you would rather exist on the Friends of Society
Speaker 1: squad and doing stuff like this as opposed to being
Speaker 1: in a very company of the people who love you,
Speaker 1: care about you, and I want to see you sute.
Speaker 1: I understood why, Deputy Chief you just had those questions.
Speaker 1: But I knew to the parents of the aid the
Speaker 1: why of the fire didn't matter much anymore. As there
Speaker 1: any tragedy, The news covers the story for a week,
Speaker 1: and then everyone moves on, everyone except the families and
Speaker 1: the friends who loved them. Piecing together the lives of
Speaker 1: the writers kept me busy long after I was back
Speaker 1: home in California. I spent a year tracking down the
Speaker 1: families of those who died, as well as their friends.
Speaker 1: Photographs too often of them on incredible train rides or
Speaker 1: playing music in the streets. If you'd stuck to the headlines,
Speaker 1: the deceased were faceless, but they were artists, the musicians,
Speaker 1: and people who were loved. As I got to speak
Speaker 1: with the families of those who died, I got to
Speaker 1: know more about how other parents handled it all. So
Speaker 1: I was glad to find Marty Harameo on Facebook. Marty's
Speaker 1: daughter was Katie Siminar, aged twenty one, from Nebraska. When
Speaker 1: Marty and I spoke, I could hear the brightness in
Speaker 1: her love for Katie. Ah. We always had a very
Speaker 1: close relationship, very close in fact, right before she took off,
Speaker 1: she said, you know what, Mom, you are my best friend,
Speaker 1: and I go, thanks, Katie, so are you. Katie was
Speaker 1: one of eight kids, but Marty told me her outgoing
Speaker 1: personality always stood out. She was one of those people
Speaker 1: that if you met her, you never forgot. She just
Speaker 1: got right inside your heart. She was just so friendly
Speaker 1: and bubbly and fun. I'd seen photos of Katie a
Speaker 1: button nosed beauty with a hint of mischief in her eyes,
Speaker 1: and like many of her fellow writers, Katie's journey onto
Speaker 1: the rails started by surprise. In college, Katie had a
Speaker 1: near death experience that changed her entire outlook on life.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened. I don't know. She wos,
Speaker 1: maybe had a seizure, maybe she hit her head, but
Speaker 1: she has been known to have a seizure from time
Speaker 1: to time. Did that caizure change her in any way?
Speaker 1: I think on the inside, I don't think she was
Speaker 1: very forthcoming in that to me. I think to her
Speaker 1: friends she had mentioned, you know, I'm not long for
Speaker 1: this world. I'm not going to live till I'm old.
Speaker 1: After Katie dropped out of college, she went to work
Speaker 1: for an aunt in Alaska, but she didn't stay long.
Speaker 1: Then Katie went to live with another aunt in Portland,
Speaker 1: where she was first introduced to train hopping. At first,
Speaker 1: Katie didn't tell her mom about riding trains, just like Ruby.
Speaker 1: She missed her mom enough to call home, but she
Speaker 1: didn't want to answer too many questions. Yeah, I'm like
Speaker 1: when she would call me, and I could hear the
Speaker 1: trains in the background. I mean, obviously they where they
Speaker 1: were staying at the warehouse or warehouses, they were right
Speaker 1: next to the track, And I'm talking next to the track,
Speaker 1: and so I'm like, Katie, I can hear the trains
Speaker 1: in the background. What are you on a train? No?
Speaker 1: Stop asking questions like that. I don't have time to
Speaker 1: answer those kind of questions. But Katie was on the
Speaker 1: rails now, and there was nothing Marty could say to
Speaker 1: convince her to come home. Just a year after leaving Portland,
Speaker 1: in the fall of twenty ten, Katie made her way
Speaker 1: to New Orleans. She had been planning to leave with
Speaker 1: her new boyfriend, Jeff Gertz and their dogs to Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: but ended up staying in New Orleans for six weeks.
Speaker 1: On a cold day in late December, Marty got a
Speaker 1: call from her daughter, and what mood was she in
Speaker 1: when she called, Oh, I'm just calling to say I
Speaker 1: hope you guys are still enjoying your holiday. I'll call
Speaker 1: back again to This was two days before the squat fire,
Speaker 1: when Katie and Jeff were trapped inside. Marty initially heard
Speaker 1: about a squat fire in New Orleans on Facebook. She
Speaker 1: didn't know at the time exactly where Katie was staying,
Speaker 1: but she had a sinking feeling in my heart. I
Speaker 1: thought I knowed she was there. I know, well how
Speaker 1: I know, but I know she was there, she was
Speaker 1: part of this. Well, then I get a call. One
Speaker 1: of the hubbos who knew Katie called Marty with the
Speaker 1: news and he said it was Katie that you know
Speaker 1: Katie and others. And I go, well, how do you
Speaker 1: know it was my Katie? And he goes, it was
Speaker 1: your Katie. Oh, Marty, that must have hit you so hard. Well,
Speaker 1: I think I went in shock. You know, She's like what.
Speaker 1: Soon after the fire, Marty was sent Katie's journal, which
Speaker 1: was miraculously safe in a nearby abandoned building untouched by
Speaker 1: the flames. I got a phone call from this lady
Speaker 1: from New Orleans and she said she and her husband
Speaker 1: owned abandoned building down there, and after the fire they
Speaker 1: went down and she said, they came across these packs,
Speaker 1: and she said, along with them was this journal laying there,
Speaker 1: and she picked it up. She goes, I wonder if
Speaker 1: this belonged any of those kids that were in that fire,
Speaker 1: and she opened up the cover and it said if
Speaker 1: I'm dead or really hurt, please call my mom, and
Speaker 1: it had this phone number. I tried to place myself
Speaker 1: in Marty's position, thinking how precious that journal would be,
Speaker 1: one of the last things her daughter had touched. From it,
Speaker 1: she got a sense of the way Katie saw her life.
Speaker 1: Marty read me a passage from Katie's journal about a
Speaker 1: squat she shared in Portland. We were on the fifth
Speaker 1: floor of a very nice apartment complex, making it easy
Speaker 1: to keep our filth and debauchery hidden from the society
Speaker 1: and police. The fancy apartments across the way could see
Speaker 1: straight in. I wonder what they thought of us. Maybe
Speaker 1: some and beat us, some disgusted. I'm not sure. I
Speaker 1: know that I felt a little sorry for them. Most
Speaker 1: of them must have been so trapped in work and
Speaker 1: paying bills. These are the types of people that take
Speaker 1: twenty pills a day and ignore their children. I wanted
Speaker 1: to tell them it didn't have to be that way,
Speaker 1: but who was I to say what they should do.
Speaker 1: Maybe they are happy that way. I loved Katie's kindness
Speaker 1: and humility and her not wanting to judge. I know
Speaker 1: Marty valued that too. She had a passage from Katie's
Speaker 1: journal made into a funeral card. This memory of beauty
Speaker 1: and adventure was what Marty held on too. She liked
Speaker 1: to think of Katie on a rainbow bus with other
Speaker 1: young people just like her, off to see the country.
Speaker 1: Like Marty said of Katie, a lot of life in
Speaker 1: a short time. Like Ruby, Katie was only on the
Speaker 1: rail else for a year and a half. By the
Speaker 1: time we spoke, Marty had made her peace with Katy's adventure.
Speaker 1: She knew her daughter wanted to live life to the
Speaker 1: fullest for as long as she had left on this earth.
Speaker 1: I spoke to seven of the eight families about the
Speaker 1: loss they felt when they found out about the fire.
Speaker 1: What I learned about the deceased is more than I
Speaker 1: can do justice to in this episode. But I wanted
Speaker 1: to honor the lives of those who died. There was
Speaker 1: Melissa Martinez seventeen, a resident of New Orleans who was
Speaker 1: staying with her boyfriend Jonathan Guerrero twenty on the night
Speaker 1: of the fire. Katie Simonar twenty one, and Jeff Gertz
Speaker 1: twenty two had planned to leave New Orleans in the
Speaker 1: new year. Justin Luttz twenty nine, had just arrived in Nola.
Speaker 1: He had a fight with his girlfriend, who ordered him
Speaker 1: out of the car in the French Quarter, and he
Speaker 1: found his way to the warehouse to crash for the night.
Speaker 1: Nicky pack aged twenty three from Pittsburgh and Sammy aged
Speaker 1: twenty five from New Orleans had just fallen in love
Speaker 1: and had big plans for the warehouse. And there was
Speaker 1: Anthony Zeletta twenty three, a Lakota sue from South Dakota.
Speaker 1: His mother, Sheila's grief was so deep she couldn't talk
Speaker 1: to me, but she wrote eloquently of her loss such
Speaker 1: young talent whose lives were cut short, but they were
Speaker 1: needed elsewhere. Sheila wrote, my sister believes that Tony began
Speaker 1: his journey to save him from a more terrible way
Speaker 1: of dying. Truth be told. I think Tony was always
Speaker 1: close to the great mysterious and he knew it as
Speaker 1: a child. And though Sheila never agreed to speak with me,
Speaker 1: she emails from time to time to express how much
Speaker 1: she still mourns his passing, also by thinking of it
Speaker 1: as fate. Many of his pictures have him with this
Speaker 1: mysterious wink, she wrote in one message, as if he
Speaker 1: knew something that we didn't. Katie's dad, Scott Siminar, who
Speaker 1: refused to speak with me about Katie, wrote to make
Speaker 1: sure I knew that Katie was different from the others.
Speaker 1: Katie was on an adventure to learn and experience life.
Speaker 1: This was simply one of her adventures that went horribly
Speaker 1: wrong and she died. She was not a train hopper,
Speaker 1: as you state. She was not a homeless person. She
Speaker 1: was not a lost soul. She had a family who
Speaker 1: loved her, and she loved her family. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: Katie's dad. Every other parent I spoke with said that
Speaker 1: these were not lost souls. They had families who loved them.
Speaker 1: But for many of them, home had become a place
Speaker 1: where they couldn't seem to do anything right, couldn't handle
Speaker 1: school or work, and couldn't interact smoothly with their families.
Speaker 1: Part of the pull of the rails was a chance
Speaker 1: to shake off the scows with a blind act of daring.
Speaker 1: Even if these kids had homes, they had found a
Speaker 1: different sense of home on the rails, a place where
Speaker 1: they didn't need to know each other's real names. To them,
Speaker 1: safety was something they built together and it might only
Speaker 1: last a moment. That part of what they believed. I
Speaker 1: did understand. It had been nearly two years since Ruby
Speaker 1: split down to join this community on the rails. At time,
Speaker 1: i'd plunge into the train yard to try to understand
Speaker 1: what drew her into this violent place. After my time
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, I now felt like I understood the
Speaker 1: life where we had chosen and some of its appeal.
Speaker 1: But it was time to stop trying to figure out
Speaker 1: who she was and why she left, And I said,
Speaker 1: examine what kind of a mother I was. I had
Speaker 1: to reckon with the fact that there was something I
Speaker 1: had done that helped push her onto the rails. Oh,
Speaker 1: wek now done helping help you and I have been
Speaker 1: leading Rader. You're a little alive. Actually, I lost the
Speaker 1: kid to the rails and wrote them for almost a decade.
Speaker 1: We just had, sadly, a very different ending. I look
Speaker 1: at the trains every day. I'm like, oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: could just hop on that and be out of here.
Speaker 1: There's a type of person that's just like there's always
Speaker 1: somewhere else to go. That's next episode on City of
Speaker 1: the Rails. Save the Moticka seven Omaticka, I touster fourteen,
Speaker 1: I s will be drinking gasoline. Damn this mallapou sit
Speaker 1: on the beach is just turning the blue came out
Speaker 1: with the brand new drug and then sat it to
Speaker 1: pull the plug in Loson. Oh look what you've done.
Speaker 1: City of the Rails is hosted and written by me
Speaker 1: Denil Morton and developed in partnership with iHeartRadio and Flip
Speaker 1: Turn Studios. Call us you only have one episode left.
Speaker 1: The number is seven oh seven six five three three
Speaker 1: three nine. If you'd like to read full profiles of
Speaker 1: seven of the eight people who perish in the squat fire,
Speaker 1: I've posted them on my website. The link is in
Speaker 1: the show notes. Our executive producer and showrunner is Julian Weller,
Speaker 1: and our executive producer at Flip Turn is Mark Hiey.
Speaker 1: Senior producer Abu Zafar producer She knows Zaki and Zoe Dankla,
Speaker 1: Patrisha Mukherjee, Jackie Huntington, and Jessica Krinchich, with production support
Speaker 1: from Marci Dupina. Original music every episode by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Our theme music for this episode is twelve to twenty
Speaker 1: eight by Profane Sass. Thank you for helping us tell
Speaker 1: this story in so many ways, with your words and
Speaker 1: with your music. Thank you to Chris Rose for hosting
Speaker 1: me all the way out in the Homachito National Forests.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Nikki Etre and beth N Macaluso. From iHeart
Speaker 1: and condolences to the parents of the people who died
Speaker 1: in the Squat fire and for all the people who
Speaker 1: are still mourning this loss. We'll be back next week,
Speaker 1: one last time on City of the Rails.