Search of Oakland warehouse finished as fire death toll remains 36
Search of Oakland warehouse finished as fire death toll remains 36
The Oakland warehouse where 36 people died in an inferno that broke out during a music event has been completely searched and no additional victims were found in the ruins, officials said Wednesday morning.
Firefighters and Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies wrapped up the grim work of combing through the 160-by-48-foot building known as the Ghost Ship overnight.
“The search has been completed,” Officer Johnna Watson, spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department, told reporters outside the gutted building.
Watson said emergency personnel and agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will continue to remove debris from the structure and search it for evidence.
The latest developments came one day after the leader of the Ghost Ship artists collective said he was “incredibly sorry” for the disaster, while rejecting the suggestion that he was responsible for the deaths of the 36 people who perished in the flames during an electronic music show.
“Should I be accountable? I can barely stand here right now,” Derick Ion Almena told interviewers on the NBC “Today” show as he stood outside the disaster scene sporting a fedora.
Almena, 47, avoided the public after the blaze broke out shortly before 11:30 p.m. Friday, and had been sighted only sporadically until he showed up Tuesday in front of the ruins at the corner of 31st Avenue and International Boulevard.
During his emotional six-minute interview with “Today,” Almena sighed heavily, defended his Ghost Ship as a noble “dream,” and angrily yelled at the show’s hosts, Matt Lauer and Tamron Hall, when they grilled him on the accusation that he made a profit off poor artists who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.
Efforts to contact the owner of the building, Chor Ng, have been unsuccessful.
In an earlier quick interview with the TV network, Almena’s wife, Micah Allison, said the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is investigating the fire, had “interviewed Derick extensively.”
Some who lived in the warehouse have said it was illegally tapping into power sources of Pacific Gas and Electric Co., but the company said Tuesday that it had no knowledge of that.
Bad wiring has been viewed all along as a possible cause of the blaze, given the building’s hodgepodge of makeshift hookups and exposed wires.
Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern said emergency workers have been extra careful about removing debris from a rear part of the converted warehouse where there are telltale signs of extreme heat, so as not to disturb what could be evidence for determining the source of the ignition.
Jill Snyder, special agent in charge of the ATF’s San Francisco bureau, said she had brought in an electrical engineer to help in the probe and that her agents were looking at “anything electrical.”
The rear area seems like the most likely source of ignition, she said, based on what firefighters saw when they fought the blaze, what witnesses said, and what the “fire science” of the probe is indicating.
The City Council is expected on Thursday to declare a state of emergency in Oakland, aimed at making its government and residents eligible for state and federal relief funds.
Rain that is expected to roll in Wednesday night and pick up by the end of the week will not change the rate at which firefighters and deputies work their way through the rubble, said Oakland Fire Department Battalion Chief Melinda Drayton.
A woman wearing a brown hooded jacket sat near the dozens of signs, flowers, and candles at Fruitvale Avenue and International Boulevard Wednesday morning.
An Alameda County Sheriff's deputy walked over and tried to comfort her by rubbing her shoulder and briefly standing with her.