OAKLAND, Calif. – California officials fear dozens may have died in a massive fire that swept through an Oakland warehouse where a concert was taking place Friday night.
Nine people have been confirmed dead, and dozens of others remain missing, officials said.
In a news conference Saturday, authorities said they expected the death toll to rise, but they did not know by how much. “We’re expecting the worst – maybe a couple dozen victims here,” Sgt. Ray Kelly, spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, told reporters.
“We did not have a lot of victims go to the hospital,” Kelly said. “It appears that people either made it out, or they didn’t make it out.”
Drones equipped with thermal technology were being used to scan the building for possible survivors, Kelly said.
Initial reports, however, were grim.
“The drones were being used with a thermal imager,” Kelly said. “It’s very, very helpful technology. It allows us to focus in, and we can actually see the heat coming off of someone if they are alive. We didn’t see any heat signatures of live people. Not to say that there’s not, but the chances are very small.”
The three-alarm fire was reported about 11:30 p.m. Friday at a building off 31st Avenue and International Boulevard, about three miles outside downtown Oakland, according to the Oakland Police Department.
The fire broke out during a party featuring musician Golden Donna’s 100% Silk West Coast Tour. Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed told The Washington Post more than 50 people were inside the building, a warehouse known as the Oakland Ghost Ship that served as a venue for art exhibits and parties.
Authorities said it wasn’t clear whether electrical issues, pyrotechnics, or errant candles or cigarettes started the fire; they will also investigate the possibility of arson. Fire officials said the building did not have sprinklers.
However, the fire is not currently being investigated as a crime, Johnna Watson, a spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department, said Saturday.
As darkness fell here Saturday, the scene around the warehouse had begun to stabilize. The burned-out building, all of its windows blown out, had blue Alameda County Sheriff’s Office tents lined up on both sides of its entrance. They allowed for first responders to enter and exit the building without anyone seeing what they were doing
The city planning and building department had previously investigated the warehouse because of complaints about trash outside the property and illegal 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. Because of the building’s zoning, neither habitation nor a concert would have been legal without permits.
One survivor, Bob Mule, said he was one of 18 artists living in the warehouse, according to the Associated Press. In an interview with KGO-TV, Mule said he and another person saw the fire and started yelling. “The fire went up really, really, really quickly,” he said.
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,” said Mark Hoffmann, deputy chief of the Oakland Fire Department.
The concert was held on a second floor, where most of the nine bodies were later found. By the time firefighters arrived at the scene, the staircase to the second floor had burned away, Hoffmann said.
The building’s instability slowed the recovery effort Saturday. Officials said the building’s roof had collapsed onto the second floor and, in many areas, the first floor, too. Firefighters and structural engineers spent much of the day shoring up the structure so it would be safe to enter to recover bodies.
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 Saturday, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said she met earlier that day with a roomful of people 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 was filled with inquiries Saturday from people looking for their loved ones or offering their assistance to those close to the victims.
Friends and family members of the concertgoers also cobbled together a list of the missing in a shared Google Drive spreadsheet that included 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.
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 warehouse was located on one of the main thoroughfares of East Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood. The building itself was considered an “artist collective,” as city officials put it, housing spaces for artists to work.
“It was beautiful,” Pete Veilleux, a friend of several of the building’s resident artists and the owner of a nearby plant nursery, said. “It was like an art gallery, but people lived there.”
Veilleux was walking at the scene Saturday 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 made it out safely, but he still didn’t know what had happened to everyone.
He said he visited the space often but never attended parties hosted there, such as the one Friday night.
“I’ve been there before the parties and after the parties, but I wasn’t that into big parties,” he said. “I didn’t go to the events because I don’t like big parties.”
Such parties are a common part of the Oakland community, which features an eclectic underground club and music scene.
Joel Shanahan, a Wisconsin-based electronic dance musician whose stage name is Golden Donna and who was headlining the concert, survived the fire, according to the artist’s Facebook page.
“Joel is safe but like many people he is heartbroken and has several friends among the missing,” a Facebook post said.
At least two organizations, the Oakland Athletics and the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, set up online relief funds for the victims. More than $50,000 had been raised as of Saturday evening.
The Golden State Warriors planned to hold a moment of silence to honor the victims of the fire before Saturday night’s game against the Phoenix Suns at nearby Oracle Arena.
A total of 72 firefighters responded to the fire, Deloach Reed said. Crews had to fight the blaze from outside because it was too hot and intense for firefighters to enter the building, she said.
Battalion Chief Lisa Baker said three sides of the building were on fire, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
On Saturday, a two-block radius in every direction from the warehouse remained closed, and first responders had turned the parking lot of a nearby Wendy’s into a command center.
Passersby wove flowers – individual ones and bouquets – into a chain-link fence surrounding a house on a corner near the warehouse.
Watson, of the Oakland Police Department, said investigators have talked to people who either left the building before the fire broke out or were able to escape. She declined to share further details.
Deloach Reed said this is the worst fire the city has seen since 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.
City officials made clear it will take time to complete a full investigation and search-and-rescue mission. Kelly said it would require a minimum of 48 hours to recover all the bodies within the structure.
Such news is little comfort to people such as Danetta Logan. A postal worker with a route starting on 69th Street, a few miles east of the warehouse, Logan was on the scene hoping to find a woman on her route, Mary Canteras, who she said had been alone and searching for her missing 14-year-old daughter since 4 a.m.
“I came here hoping to see her because she’s been out here by herself,” said Logan, who was in uniform.
“I talked to her, and she was out here and her phone was going dead, so I’m sitting here hoping she calls back.”
While police couldn’t confirm the presence of minors at the party, there appeared to be at least one, which was what upset Logan most about the entire tragedy.
“That’s the biggest problem with this,” she said. “Just a lot of babies that got let in.”
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Kristine Guerra, Ana Swanson, Tim Bontemps
Image: Fox40
