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Death Toll in Oakland Warehouse Fire Rises to 30 as Search Continues Death Toll in Oakland Warehouse Fire Rises to More Than 30 as Search Continues
(about 1 hour later)
OAKLAND, Calif. — Firefighters picking through the ruins of a warehouse here found more bodies overnight, bringing to 33 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 at a news conference on Sunday. OAKLAND, Calif. — Carmen Brito was asleep on Friday night when she suddenly woke up gasping for breath. Outside her small studio, one floor down from where a raging concert was taking place, she saw her neighbor’s wall on fire.
In one of the deadliest structure fires in the United States in the last decade, partygoers at the two-story converted warehouse were asphyxiated on Friday night by thick black fumes, which poured from the building’s windows for several hours. City officials said Sunday they had opened a criminal investigation into the fire’s cause. “I’m pretty sure I was the first person to see the fire, and when I saw it, it was bigger than I was,” said Ms. Brito, 28. The inferno killed at least 33 people and is regarded as one of the worst structure fires in the United States in over a decade.
Survivors stood across the street in a Wendy’s parking lot, watching firefighters try to put out the blaze and rescue those inside. On Sunday, firefighters were digging through the ruins of the warehouse, where people had gathered for an electronic dance show on Friday when flames ripped through the building, collapsing the floors. The search of the building, which only had two exits, could continue for days, officials said at a news conference, warning that the death toll could climb considerably higher.
“We will be here for days and days to come,” Sgt. Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office said. The authorities said on Sunday that seven families had been notified that loved ones had died in the fire, while many more awaited further news. Some victims were from countries in Europe and Asia. The officials were in the process of contacting agencies abroad.
Melinda Drayton, battalion chief for the Oakland Fire Department, said rescue workers had spent the night methodically sifting through the charred warehouse, taking rubble to a lot across the street where it was hauled away “literally bucket by bucket.” The building’s roof had collapsed, and the site was a dangerous scene of debris, beams and other wreckage. Ms. Brito was just one member of a community of roughly 25 artists who inhabited the building illegally — but in plain sight of Oakland city officials. The building, which was known as the Ghost Ship and has been under investigation for code violations, had a permit to function as a warehouse, but not as a residence or for a party. A criminal investigation began on Sunday.
Excavators and other heavy construction equipment had been brought in to help with the search, Sergeant Kelly said. Ms. Brito said the fire started at the very back of the building, in a studio next to hers, when the couple who occupied the room were gone. She said a firefighter investigating the blaze had asked her whether the couple had recently installed a refrigerator, which they had, raising the possibility that the building’s electrical system played a role. The officials said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire.
“It was quiet, it was heartbreaking,” Chief Drayton said of the search, in which firefighters had been able to gain access to only about 20 percent of the building. She said she did not believe the workers had come close to finding where the fire started. Ms. Brito and another survivor, Nikki Kelber, 44, said the building’s renters had repeatedly asked its owner to upgrade the electrical system, which failed often enough that residents had flashlights in their studios.
Chief Drayton was visibly upset during the news conference as she described the emotional and physical difficulty of the long night. She said the search would be a “long and arduous process.” A 19-year veteran of the Oakland Fire Department, she said the fire was the most deadly conflagration in the history of the department that she was aware of. Ms. Kelber and Ms. Brito said that the building had many fire extinguishers and that one of the residents, Max Ohr, tried to use one on the flames but soon gave up.
She 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. Officials 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. “It was like trying to put out a bonfire with a squirt gun,” Ms. Brito said.
On Sunday, the authorities said that three families of victims had been notified, but that other names would be released “in the coming hours.” On Saturday afternoon, a list of those missing, compiled by friends and family, had grown to about 35 people. The residents of the building said they had been priced out of parts of the San Francisco Bay Area that have become increasingly unaffordable. They called themselves refugees and were happy to be living among a community of like-minded artists paying an affordable rent.
Firefighters arrived just before midnight Friday, and the fire was still smoldering more than 12 hours later. Oakland itself has seen rents and home prices skyrocket with the technology boom. The high cost of living has led to alternative housing arrangements across the region, from a community of homes made of shipping containers to lines of recreational vehicles on Silicon Valley side streets.
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. But these spaces, while often illegal, are subject to the same market forces rippling through the broader market. That has given outsize power to the so-called master tenants who control the lease of a building and, at least in some cases, can make money by subletting to struggling artists willing to live in substandard conditions.
“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.” The Ghost Ship was one of these illegal living spaces. Residents and visitors described it as both a haven for artists and a fire trap, with a warren of trailers, broken pianos and stacks of wood and a complex network of electrical cords and generators.
She added, “I have lost 20 friends in the past 24 hours.” It was home for jewelers, metalworkers, dancers, musicians and others, and parties that brought hundreds to its labyrinthine corridors. But it was also plagued by discord and the whims of its two master tenants, Derick Ion Almena and Micah Allison, who lived there with their three children, ages 13, 7 and 6.
Family members of the missing expressed anguish over spending hours waiting to know if their relatives were inside. Several residents said they were lured in by the promise of cheap rent and a creative community, only to find that their new home had no heat, sporadic electricity and a master tenant — Mr. Almena — who would bring in homeless people to harass residents who crossed him. Mr. Almena was serving a sentence of three years’ probation, having pleaded no contest in January to a felony charge of receiving stolen property. Mr. Almena and Ms. Allison could not be reached for comment on Sunday.
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. Mr. Vega said he had heard from a friend that his brother was at the party. “A lot of people were his friend because they believed in the miracle,” said Shelley Mack, 58, who moved into the space in October 2014, paying $700 to live in a mobile home inside the warehouse. “But it was a sick place.”
“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.” Ms. Mack left after several frightening incidents, she said. In one, she said, a friend of Mr. Almena’s pulled a gun on several residents.
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. Other people who knew the space questioned why the police did not do anything to shut down the Ghost Ship.
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. “That place was a tinderbox,” said Danielle Boudreaux, 40, who had visited the warehouse. “Anybody who went in there who had any kind of authority should have not allowed it to continue.”
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. Mr. Ohr, who took on a supervisory role among tenants, said they told the landlord that the electrical system needed upgrading. “We reached out on multiple occasions, complaining that the power wasn’t working,” Mr. Ohr said. “They made no attempt to make it right.”
“A lot of these people are young people,” Sergeant Kelly said Saturday. “They are from all parts of our community.” Some of the dead may be citizens of other countries, he said. The area where the fire had started had been closed off to the partygoers and was “unmonitored,” Mr. Ohr said. “There are plenty of signs that point to it being an electrical fire.”
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. Ms. Kelber’s studio was near one of the building’s exits, and when she spotted a “ball of fire” coming down the hallway she had only seconds to react. “After 15 seconds, the power went out, and another 30 seconds later it was completely engulfed. It went so fast.”
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. Ms. Kelber and Ms. Brito described confusion in the seconds after the fire was discovered because the urgent and panicked cries of residents were drowned out by a D.J.’s music in the building’s mezzanine, where the concert was underway.
“In my career of 30 years, I haven’t experienced something of this magnitude,” she said. The wooden statues, exposed beams and countless other objects made of timber on the ground floor of the building helped fuel a fire that raged for hours and gutted the entire structure.
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. One of the residents escaped barefoot in his pajamas carrying his two dogs.
Chief Deloach Reed said there were “no reports of smoke alarms going off.” At least two fire extinguishers were inside, she said. Another resident appeared to have injured himself in a fall while trying to escape, Ms. Brito said. A fellow resident, Bob Mule, heard his cries but was unable to pull him from the fire.
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. “Bob tried pulling him out but had to leave him behind, because Bob was starting to get burning things falling on him,” Ms. Brito said.
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. After they escaped, Ms. Brito and the other survivors stood outside the building, helplessly watching it burn.
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. “It was something out of a horror film, with cloud after cloud of black smoke,” Ms. Brito said. “Occasionally a body would come hurtling through the door toward the street.”
“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.” Ms. Brito said residents were aware that they were living in the warehouse without permits and recognized the risks involved.
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. “I get why people could look at us and think that we were responsible,” she said. “But we were doing our best with what we had.”
“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.’”