People dancing on the second floor of the Oakland warehouse that burned down last week didn’t know a deadly fire was raging inside the building until it was too late, officials said.
“There was rapid fire progression,” Jill Snyder, head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives field office in San Francisco, explained at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.
“Initial witness interviews have indicated that the fire was well-developed by the time the second-floor occupants realized a fire was going on on the first floor,” she said, adding that the blaze appeared to have started on the first floor.
“There were two internal stairwells from the second floor that led to the first floor and neither went to an exit. Smoke traveled up the stairwells, trapping the occupants on the second floor. The occupants of the building were consumed by smoke before they were able to get out of the building.”
The fire — which broke out during a dance party last Friday night and claimed the lives of 36 people — has shaken the city of Oakland and captured the attention of the entire country.
Officials said Wednesday that their recovery efforts had officially ended and that the death toll was expected to stand. They went on to shoot down reports that claimed a refrigerator was the possible source of the fire — saying, “This is not accurate.”
“The refrigerator is still being examined, but has not been determined to be the cause of the fire,” Snyder said, noting how there was currently no evidence at this time that the blaze was arson or that it was intentionally set.
“It hasn’t definitively been ruled out, but we have no evidence of that,” she added.
Numerous photos and first-hand accounts from former residents have emerged since the fire, depicting the “Ghost Ship” building as a cluttered safe-haven for drug users and starving artists.
Wood pallets, broken furniture and propane tanks can be seen strewn throughout the 86-year-old, two-story structure in several of the images.
“There is no evidence that a fire alarm system or fire suppression was installed in the building” at the time of the fire,” Snyder said.
To make matters worse, “the staircases at either side went down to the first floor on the inside of the building” — and did not lead to an exit, according to officials.
“Most staircases go to where there’s an exit to an exterior,” Snyder explained. “They came down to the first floor inside the building.”
With Post Wires