DEATH DANCE
9 killed, 25 missing as fire guts party in the ‘Ghost Ship’
UP TO 40 people were feared dead Saturday after a raging inferno engulfed a cluttered California warehouse hosting an illegal late-night dance party, officials said.
Nine people were confirmed dead and at least an additional 25 were unaccounted for following the Friday night blaze in a gritty section of Oakland, authorities said.
Officials said as many as 40 people may have perished inside the warehouse where a makeshift stairwell fashioned out of wooden pallets provided the only escape from the second-floor party.
“It appears that either you got out or you got trapped inside,” Alameda County sheriff’s office spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly said.
“We are prepared for a mass casualty event. We don’t exactly know how many.”
The victims in the city’s deadliest blaze in recent memory were all believed to be in their 20s and 30s.
Many of them were charred beyond recognition, Kelly said.
Several panicked friends and relatives gathered at the local sheriff’s office anxiously awaiting news.
“I just want to go over there. I have my work boots on, I’m ready to go,” said a teary Dan Vega, whose younger brother and the brother’s girlfriend were among those unaccounted for.
“Just give me some gloves. I’ll help out any way, shape or form. I don’t care. This is infuriating.”
Firefighters wielding chain saws and axes struggled Saturday to enter the notorious warehouse known as the “Oakland Ghost Ship.”
There were no sprinklers or working smoke detectors in the space, home to an artists’ collective that featured a labyrinth of tiny studios, officials said
The city opened an investigation into the site Nov. 13 after receiving complaints about “blight and unpermitted construction,” officials said. The warehouse was hit with several code violations in recent years for illegal construction and dangerous levels of trash and debris, reports say.
Inspectors had already slapped the building with three citations this year alone, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“This property is a storage (facility), but the owner turned
it to become (a) trash recycle site. The yard became a trash collection site and the main building was remodeled for residential,” according to city records.
The party would have required a city permit, but none was issued, officials said.
The Friday night rave was headlined by the Wisconsinbased electronic musician Golden Donna, whose real name is Joel Shanahan.
Dozens of revelers who shelled out $10 to $15 were packed into the second floor when the blaze broke out about 11:30 p.m.
“I literally felt my skin peeling and my lungs being suffocated by smoke,” photographer Bob Mule told the East Bay Times. “I couldn’t get the fire extinguisher to work.”
Mule said he tried to rush back into the building to rescue a friend, but was beaten back by lashing flames and thick smoke.
“It was too hot, too much smoke,” Mule added. “I had to get out of there.”
The first firefighters on the scene spotted nine bodies in the burning carnage, but they had to retreat from the building before they could pull anyone out because the flames were too fierce. It took firefighters five hours to douse the massive blaze. The cause was not immediately clear. Hours later, rescue workers were forced to flee over fears of a collapse. Complicating the recovery effort, the roof pancaked onto the second level, which fell to the bottom floor in some places. “There are bodies trapped in there that we need to cut from the wreckage,” sheriff’s spokesman Kelly said at a Saturday night news conference.
Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed (inset) said the blaze turned the building into a virtual deathtrap.
“There wasn’t a real clear entry or exit path up on the second floor,” she said. “The way the building was situated, it really made it difficult for people to escape.”
“In my career of 30 years,” she added, “I haven’t experienced something of this magnitude.”