High-school students, musicians and a deputy’s son are among the 36 people are now confirmed dead in the Oakland warehouse inferno — a number fire officials said Monday will “absolutely” continue rising as they search the scorched building.
Emergency responders stopped looking for bodies for about nine hours Monday after discovering a wall in the two-story building that was on the brink of collapse, officials said.
Before search efforts re-started, investigators said they had already scoured 70 percent of the charred building.
The grim Monday morning update came after emergency responders temporarily stopped looking for bodies after discovering a wall in the two-story building that was on the brink of collapse just after midnight.
Officials are hoping to restart the search efforts Monday afternoon — adding that they’ve already scoured 70 percent of the building.
“We absolutely believe that the number of fire fatalities will increase,” Oakland fire battalion chief Melinda Drayton said.
President Obama, in statement on Monday, thanked emergency workers for their hard work. Obama mourned how “many people – including young men and women with their whole futures ahead of them – have tragically lost their lives.”
The converted warehouse, which was dubbed the “Ghost Ship,” was home to an artist colony called the Satya Yuga Collective that held events and displayed art in the building.
Derick Ion Almena, identified by current and former Ghost Ship tenants as the building’s operator, survived the blaze, as did his wife and two kids.
Almena on Sunday wrote on Facebook, whining about lost pieces of art – seemingly oblivious of the dozens of lives lost inside his death trap.
KGO-TV of San Francisco found Almena late Sunday night, checked into a downtown Oakland hotel under a fake name. After initially running away from cameras, Almena stopped and said he’s heartbroken by the tragedy.
“They’re my children. They’re my friends, they’re my family, they’re my loves, they’re my future,” he told the ABC affiliate. “What else do I have to say?”
The Ghost Ship had been in Oakland’s crosshairs for a while, but cops and code inspectors couldn’t get inside last month despite two visits to the building.
Oakland police are now going through footage grabbed by their officers’ body cameras to see if they captured code violations without realizing it at the time, officials said.
“Based on the significant charring and damage in the building, we’ve got some areas where the steel is actually twisted or wrapped in the back of the building,” Drayton said.
Fire investigators said an area in the back of the building is where the fire ignited Friday night during an illegal dance rave attended by about 100 people, but that there’s “no way of telling the cause,” according to Oakland fire chief Teresa Deloach Reed.
Authorities also warned Ghost Ship neighbors to brace for 12-hour-long power outages starting at some point on Monday afternoon.
Investigators have to bring in tall cranes to move debris in what’ll be a tight fit, in and around nearby utility lines – so they’ll cut power to 500 neighboring homes and businesses as a precaution, officials said.
“We don’t want anything to touch those power lines so this is a safety issue,” Oakland police officer Johanna Watson said.
“The (risk of) crane vs. the power lines makes it extremely dangerous for everyone. That’s why we’re doing the planned power outage.”
