Oakland announced that 24 bodies had been found
in the rubble of a makeshift nightclub that was
gutted by a fire on Friday.
Emergency personnel spent Saturday night sifting
carefully through rubble and twisted debris after a
fire gutted a makeshift nightclub here on Friday,
leaving dozens more unaccounted for.
Officials siad during a news conference that they
had searched about 20 percent of the building, and
continued to go through it “literally bucket by
bucket.”
OAKLAND, Calif. — Firefighters picking through
the ruins of a warehouse “literally bucket by
bucket” found 15 more bodies overnight,
bringing to 24 the death toll from a fire that
ripped through a makeshift nightclub on Friday.
The search of the rest of the building could take
days, officials said Sunday at a news conference.
“We have located 24 deceased victims of this
fire,” Sgt. Ray Kelly of the Alameda County
Sheriff’s Office said. “We anticipate that the
number of victims will rise.”
In one of the deadliest structure fires in theUnited States in the last decade, partygoers in the
two-story converted warehouse were asphyxiated
on Friday night by thick black fumes, which
poured from the building’s windows for several
hours. Survivors stood across the street in a
Wendy’s parking lot, watching firefighters try to
put out the blaze and rescue those inside.
“We will be here for days and days to come,”
Sergeant Kelly said.
Melinda Drayton, battalion chief for the Oakland
Fire Department, said rescue workers had spent
the night sifting through the charred warehouse,
methodically removing debris to a lot across the
street where it was hauled away by dump trucks.
“It was quiet, it was heartbreaking,” Chief
Drayton said of the search, in which firefighters
had been able to access only about 20 percent of
the warehouse.
Oakland officials said that it could take up to
several days to search the rambling, structurally
insecure warehouse, while ensuring the safety of
emergency personnel. The building, which they
described as “a labyrinth of artist studios,” had
been under investigation for several months.
They said escape from the building, which had
only two exits, might have been complicated
because the first and second floors were linked
by an ad hoc staircase made of wooden pallets.
By Saturday afternoon, a list of those missing,
compiled by friends and family, had grown to
about 35 people.
Sergeant Kelly told reporters that excavators and
a crane were being brought in to help in the
recovery and that the building had been flooded
with light to allow rescue work to continue
through the night.
“We know that there are bodies in there that we
cannot get to, that have been seen but have not
been recovered,” Sergeant Kelly said at an
evening news conference.
Others who were believed to be missing have
been accounted for, he said, adding, “We have
been able to put some families’ fears at ease.”
Earlier on Saturday, Sergeant Kelly said the
authorities were “expecting the worst, maybe a
couple dozen victims.”
“It appears that people either made it out or they
didn’t make it out,” he said.
Firefighters arrived just before midnight Friday,
and the fire was still smoldering more than 12
hours later.
One survivor, Aja Archuleta, 29, a musician, was
scheduled to perform at the electronic music
party with her synthesizers and drum machines
around 1 a.m. and was working at the door when
the fire broke out around 11 or 11:15 p.m.
“There were two people on the first level who had
spotted a small fire that was growing quickly,”
she said. “It was a very quick and chaotic build,
from a little bit of chaos to a lot of chaos.”
She added, “I have lost 20 friends in the past 24
hours.”
Family members of the missing expressed
anguish over spending hours waiting to know if
their relatives were inside.
Daniel Vega, 36, said he was “infuriated” waiting
to hear news about his 22-year-old brother, Alex
Vega, who had not answered his phone Saturday
morning. Mr. Vega said he had heard from a
friend that his brother was at the party
“Give me some gloves. I’ve got work shoes. I’m
ready,” Mr. Vega said. “Let me find my brother,
that’s all I want.”
The building’s roof had collapsed, and the site
was a dangerous scene of debris, beams and
other wreckage. The structure had a permit to
function as a warehouse, but not as a residence
or for a party. Officials said they were
investigating reports that the building had also
been used as a living space.
At the news conference, Mayor Libby Schaaf
said: “This is complicated. And it’s going to take
us time to do the investigation that these families
deserve.”
The building, known as the Ghost Ship, in the
Fruitvale neighborhood, was the site of an event
that was to feature a range of experimental and
electronic music, performed by a synth musician
drawing from the “black, queer diaspora” and
others, as well as a visual installation. On
Saturday morning, the event’s Facebook page
said admission to the show was $10 for those
who arrived before 11 p.m. and $15 after that.
By the end of the day, the pricing had
disappeared and the page had turned into an
emergency message board, as dozens of friends
and family members posted about missing loved
ones.
“A lot of these people are young people,” Sergeant
Kelly said. “They are from all parts of our
community.” Some of the dead may be citizens of
other countries, he said.
Images from the building’s website depict a
wooden studio filled with antiques, sculptures
and curios. Old lamps, musical instruments,
suitcases and rugs decorated the ornate space.
Emergency workers said they arrived to find the
building filled with heavy smoke and flames.
Bodies were found on the second floor of the
building, Chief Teresa Deloach Reed of the
Oakland Fire Department said Saturday.
“In my career of 30 years, I haven’t experienced
something of this magnitude,” she said.
Even without a full accounting, the fire was one
of the deadliest in the United States in many
years. In 2003, 100 people were killed in a fire in
a nightclub in Warwick, R.I. An explosion at a
fertilizer plant in Texas in 2013 killed 15 people.
Chief Deloach Reed said there were “no reports
of smoke alarms going off.” At least two fire
extinguishers were inside, she said.
On the event’s Facebook page, people distributed
a spreadsheet that listed identifying information
— age, height, weight, hair color, tattoos — and
contact numbers for many of those who were
unaccounted for.
Oakland’s music and art scene was already
struggling with high rent prices. The city’s
underground bands and artists live a
seminomadic existence in search of warehouses,
homes and other spaces to show art, play music
and dance into the early hours.
Diego Aguilar-Canabal, 24, a blogger and
freelance writer who lives in Berkeley and plays
guitar in a band called the Noriegas, estimated he
had been to three dozen house and warehouse
parties over the past two years.
“The basic idea is people want to do loud things
late at night, and industrial space is really good
for that because there aren’t many neighbors to
complain,” he said. “There’s a lot of anxiety
about income inequality and class warfare, and a
lot of these artists are trying to do the best they
can to have a community.”
Mr. Aguilar-Canabal has been to the Ghost Ship
once, last summer, and remembered it as a dim
and cluttered area with a “maze” of furniture,
canvas paintings on the walls and papier-mâché
hanging from the ceilings.
“The reason we left was that it had only had one
source of water, which was a sink, and the water
tasted really gross,” he recalled. “We went to a
corner store to get something to drink and were
like, ‘Let’s just go home.’”
Mr. Aguilar-Canabal flew to Vancouver early
Saturday morning, and first read about the blaze
on Twitter. Instead of going to bed, he stayed up
tracking the fire on social media until it was time
to go to the airport. He spent most of the day
looking for the names of friends who he thinks
were killed, and calling Highland Hospital in
Oakland.
“It’s just a really surreal experience to be
refreshing a window to see if names are
confirmed to be missing or not missing,” he said.
“I’m keeping track of a couple names and hoping
they end up being in a hospital.”
{source : nytimes}
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