Oakland: The death toll from a massive fire at a California warehouse shot up to 36 on Monday and was expected to rise even further as emergency crews sift through the rubble.
Eleven of the 36 victims recovered so far at the site near San Francisco have been positively identified, Alameda County Deputy Sheriff Tya Modeste said. Most of the casualties were in their 20s and 30s, and one was a 17-year-old boy.
Officials said they expected to recover more victims from the converted warehouse in Oakland that went up in flames late Friday, trapping dozens of partygoers attending a rave.
Firefighters were forced to suspend their search of the wreckage late Sunday for safety reasons, but were able to get back into the building early Monday.
“We’re no closer to finding a cause and we absolutely believe that the number of fire fatalities will increase,” Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed said.
Officials warned the recovery work would drag on as firefighters remove debris “bucket by bucket,” moving it to an off-site location to sift through it.
President Barack Obama expressed sadness over the tragedy, the deadliest in California’s modern history.
“While we still don’t know the full toll of this disaster, we do know that an American community has been devastated, and many people - including young men and women with their whole futures ahead of them - have tragically lost their lives,” he said in a statement.
The fire erupted in the back of the warehouse occupied by an arts collective known as Oakland Ghost Ship as it hosted a dance party attended by between 50 and 100 people.
It spread quickly through the structure, trapping partygoers whose bodies were found scattered throughout the building’s mazelike interior.
Power would be cut off in the area for up to 12 hours from midday on Monday to allow crews to bring in a crane to help with cleanup efforts, police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said.
Fast-moving blaze
Survivors have spoken of the speed with which the fire spread through the warehouse with people banging on windows when they couldn’t escape.
Photographer Chris Nechodom, who was at the dance party, said people first thought the smoke was coming from a fog machine.
“And then it got a little thicker,” he said. “It all happened within seconds. We started seeing people running around, frantic and screaming ‘Fire!’”
In a macabre indication of what the fire may have done to the bodies, the authorities are asking relatives to preserve hairbrushes and toothbrushes to assist in matching DNA samples.
“It’s a terrible thing to have to say, but that’s what we are left to deal with,” Sergeant Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department said on Sunday.
Although the cause of the fast-moving blaze remains under investigation, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said the district attorney had opened a criminal investigation.
“You have to understand that the scope of this tragedy is tremendous,” she said. “We have many, many witnesses to interview. We are in the process of doing that.”
Some of the victims were from Europe and Asia, and local authorities are working with the State Department to contact foreign governments.
City officials acknowledged over the weekend that they had received a number of complaints about the warehouse and that inspectors had been there last month but left when no one answered.
Images published online show artwork, pianos and wooden objects throughout the building, which helps explain why the blaze raced through the structure despite firefighters’ arrival within minutes.
There were also questions about whether the building was properly equipped with sprinklers or and detectors.
Officials said the roof collapsed onto the second floor, which was connected to the ground floor only by a makeshift stairway made of wooden pallets and plywood.
The deadliest nightclub fire in the United States in recent decades occurred in 2003, when pyrotechnic effects by the rock band Great White set off an inferno at The Station nightclub in Rhode Island, killing 100 people.
