OAKLAND, Calif. – California officials say 24 people have died in a massive fire that swept through an Oakland warehouse where a concert was taking place Friday night.
The new death toll came Sunday morning, more than 30 hours since a massive fire engulfed a warehouse in East Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood. The three-alarm fire was reported at about 11:30 p.m. Friday at a building known as Oakland Ghost Ship, a warehouse that’s been converted for artist exhibits and parties and has been previously investigated by city officials due to complaints for trash and illegal internal structures built inside.
Fire crews worked overnight, combing through piles of debris and transferring them to an empty building next door, Melinda Drayton, battalion chief for the Oakland Fire Department, told reporters during a news conference Sunday morning. So far, crews have only been able to go through 20 percent of the building.
“This will be a long, arduous process,” Drayton said. “What we were able to accomplish in 12 hours was a phenomenal feat. We have a lot more to go. We’re going to be here for a few more days.”
Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach-Reed told The Washington Post Saturday that more than 50 people were inside, attending a party featuring musician Golden Donna’s 100% Silk West Coast Tour. The concert was being held on a second floor, where most of the recovered bodies were later found. A makeshift stairway put together with pallets was separating it from the first floor, Deloach-Reed said.
By the time firefighters arrived at the scene, the staircase had burned away, Mark Hoffmann, deputy chief of the Oakland Fire Department, said Saturday.
The building’s instability slowed the recovery effort on Saturday. Officials said the building’s roof had collapsed onto the second floor and, in many areas, the first floor as well. Firefighters and structural engineers spent much of the day shoring up the structure so it would be safe to enter the building and recover the bodies. Hoffman told Reuters about a dozen people survived the blaze, including one who went to a hospital.
Sgt. Ray Kelly, spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, said 24 people remain missing. That number, Kelly said, will go up.
“We will be here for days and days to come,” Kelly said. “We anticipate that the number of victims will rise and will increase.”
Drayton, the battalion chief, paused to regain composure as she talked about the rescue efforts that are underway.
“Bucket by bucket, in a methodical, thoughtful, mindful and compassionate way. We have firefighters basically with coveralls, buckets and shovels, taking bits of debris out into the vacant lot,” she said. “The somber approach that they took this search, it was quiet, it was heartbreaking.”
She said crews found 10 of the victims in the middle of the building. Four of them were found close together, and the other six were within 10 feet away. Three more were found on the east side of the building, Drayton said.
Questions remain about whether electrical issues, pyrotechnics, or errant candles or cigarettes had started the fire. Fire officials said the building did not have sprinklers.
The answers likely won’t come anytime soon.
“We don’t believe that we have even gotten close to the point of origin of the fire,” Drayton said.
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An arson investigation would also be underway, though the fire is not being investigated as a crime, Officer Johnna Watson, a spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department, said.
The city planning and building department had previously investigated the warehouse due to complaints about trash outside the property and illegal internal structures built inside the warehouse, said Darin Ranelletti, the department’s director. Complaints had been filed about the building as recently as November.
Ranelletti said authorities are still investigating whether people were living in the building. The last permitted use of the building was as a warehouse, so neither habitation nor a concert would have been legal without permits.
The building’s interior featured a tangled network of antique furniture, artwork, musical instruments, wooden lofts, tapestries and oddities, such as mannequin parts, according to a Tumblr blog that appears to show the building.
“It was a labyrinth,” Hoffman said.
The building is located on 31st Avenue, a short block off International Boulevard, one of the main thoroughfares of East Oakland.
Officials asked for patience and respect for the victims’ families as they investigate the many questions that remain, including the fire’s cause, the building’s history, and whether the party’s attendance exceeded its maximum occupancy.
At a news conference on Saturday, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said she had met earlier that day with a “roomful” of people who were missing loved ones.
“This is a devastating scene. This is complicated and it is going to take us time to do the methodical, thorough and professional investigation that these families deserve to find out what in fact happened,” she said.
The majority of those inside the building were young people, some of whom were from outside the Bay Area or the United States, Kelly told reporters.
The event’s Facebook page filled with inquiries on Saturday from people looking for their loved ones or offering their assistance to families and friends of the victims.
Friends and family members of the concert goers also cobbled together a list of missing people in a shared Google docs spreadsheet, along with identifying features and contact numbers. Forty names were listed on the spreadsheet as of Saturday evening; seven were marked either safe or in the hospital. The list is now private.
Deloach-Reed said fire officials will verify those names against the ones they have compiled.
“This is pretty tragic for us,” Deloach-Reed said. “It is hitting this community pretty hard. I don’t even want to talk about how the families and friends are feeling. We have a community that’s hurting.”
The building itself was considered to be an “artist collective,” as city officials put it, with spaces there for artists to work.
“It was beautiful,” Pete Veilleux, friend to several of the building’s residents and the owner of a nearby native plant nursery called East Bay Wilds, said. “It was like an art gallery, but people lived there.”
Veilleux was walking with his 10-year-old dog, Lucy, hoping to get updates on the status of the people he knew who lived there. He was relieved to learn that some of them had made it out all right, but still didn’t know what had happened to everyone.
Drayton, the battalion chief, said the fire is the deadliest one she’s seen in her 19-year career as a firefighter.
The only comparable incident is the Oakland hills firestorm that killed 25 people in 1991. That fire, which rapidly spread through the Oakland hills, wiped out nearly 3,500 homes, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Tim Bontemps, Kristine Guerra, Ana Swanson
