California warehouse fire leaves nine dead, 25 missing

At least nine people were killed and 25 people are unaccounted for and feared missing after a fire broke out during a party in a warehouse in Oakland, California, city officials said on Saturday, as anguished friends and relatives awaited word of their fate.

The cause of the blaze and precise number of casualties remained undetermined hours after flames engulfed the two-story structure, which is known as the “Ghost Ship”. A police spokesman said the death toll could be “a couple dozen”, with officials fearing that the death toll could rise to as many as 40 people.

“We’re expecting the worst, maybe a couple dozen victims here,” said Ray Kelly, a spokesman with the Alameda County sheriff’s office. “There were a lot of people in this building and I don’t have an answer to how many victims there were.”

Officials said teams were forced to pause their search and recovery work on Saturday morning in order to stabilize the building, as the walls had weakened to dangerous levels.

“The building is very tricky,” Kelly said. “There’s all sorts of wreckage and debris. This is just a tragedy. There are no easy answers.”

The blaze started at about 11:30 p.m. on Friday in the city's Fruitvale district, a mostly Latino, blue-collar area that is also home to many artists living and working in converted lofts.

City Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed, said the blaze marked the worst single-structure fire she had seen in her career. Mayor Libby Schaaf called it a "devastating scene."

Nine fatalities were initially confirmed, and authorities were “expecting the worst” as they sought to account for “a couple of dozen” people who were reported missing, Sergeant Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the county sheriff, told an afternoon news conference.

He later clarified that at least two dozen people remained unaccounted for Saturday night besides the nine victims whose remains were initially found and recovered from the rubble. Those bodies were transported to the coroner's bureau for identification.

He said an additional, unspecified number of bodies have since been spotted in the compromised structure but had not been reached.

Many of the victims were young people in their 20s or 30s, authorities said.

Authorities have said they did not know how many people were at the party or how many lived on the premises.

But one eyewitness, who said he left the party to buy liquor and returned to find flames shooting from the second floor, said on Twitter that he saw about 60 to 70 people in the building.

The warehouse roof collapsed onto the second floor of the building during the fire, according to authorities, and portions of the second floor caved in on the first story.

Authorities said they did not suspect arson, but investigators want to find out if the building had a history of building code violations.

City records showed that the warehouse had faced numerous formal complaints, including a “housing habitability” charge of “illegal interior building structure”, filed last month. The city’s investigation was still pending when the fire broke out.

In the last two years, the building had also faced two “blight” complaints, related to trash and “construction debris”, including claims that some garbage was “hazardous”.

Darin Ranelletti, the city’s planning and building director, said that the city was able to confirm blight reports, but that its investigation into illegal construction within the building was not completed. The building was not permitted for residential living and would have required a special permit for a party, he added.