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December 5, 2016

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Dozens of partygoers missing after fire destroys warehouse

FIRE crews in California were yesterday still searching the charred remains of a warehouse destroyed by fire during a rave party, with officials saying the death toll could reach 40.

Relatives of dozens of people missing after the Friday night blaze in Oakland near San Francisco are enduring an anxious wait for news. Nine people have been confirmed dead so far.

The converted two-story warehouse was used by artists as a living and work space but had no license for this, officials said, nor for the electronic dance party under way when the blaze broke out.

The cause of the fire is not yet known.

Firefighters said the building seemed to have no sprinklers or smoke detectors.

Orange flames shot through the roof as the fire burned for hours and thick smoke billowed into the sky. The roof collapsed onto the second floor, which officials said was connected to the ground floor only by a makeshift system of wooden pallets.

Firefighters had to withdraw from the building to shore it up when part of the fragile structure began to move.

Sergeant Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriff’s department said on Saturday evening that about two dozen people who were reported missing had been located but at least two dozen more remained missing.

“We don’t know how far into the process we are, because we don’t absolutely have a number of people that we know are deceased inside of there,” Kelly said.

Fire Chief Teresa Reed said: “There’s still a lot of the building that needs to be searched.”

An official at the sheriff’s office said yesterday that the death toll could rise to 40 or even higher.

Most of those who perished in the blaze that started about 11:30pm on Friday were thought to have died on the upper floor of the warehouse known as the Oakland Ghost Ship, Reed said.

“It must have been a very fast-moving fire,” she added.

The party was attended by an estimated 50 to 100 people.

The sheriff’s office station in Oakland became a center for relatives of the missing. The Salvation Army dropped off 50 meals for them, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Daniel Vega told the newspaper he was looking for his brother Alex and his girlfriend, who had said they were going to a rave in Oakland.

“If he is dead, if he is in the rubble, fine, I’ll get over it. But I just want to find him,” Vega said.

Al Garcia, who owns a supply company across the street, said flames were coming out of the windows and roof.

“I knew people were dead,” he said. “There was no way anyone could get out.”

Some of the missing were believed to be from overseas, making identification of the victims — thought to be in their 20s and 30s — more difficult.

The warehouse had numerous partitions added to the original building.

Some of the structural changes made it extremely difficult for people to escape, Reed said. “There wasn’t a real entry or exit path.”

The clutter also hampered firefighters’ efforts to put out the blaze.

“It was filled end-to-end with furniture, whatnot, collections,” Reed said. “It was like a maze, almost.”




 

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