Fire in Oakland

The New York Times has an article by Thomas Fuller, Eli Rosenberg, and Conor Dougherty about a deadly fire in Oakland, California:

Anguished family members awaited news of the fate of dozens of people still unaccounted for on Saturday after a fire gutted a makeshift nightclub in Oakland, California, leaving at least nine people dead.
In one of the deadliest structure fires in the United States in the past decade, partygoers at the two-story converted warehouse were asphyxiated on Friday night by thick black fumes, which poured from the building’s windows for several hours. Survivors stood across the street in a Wendy’s parking lot, watching firefighters try to put out the blaze and rescue those inside.
Oakland officials said the building, a rambling warehouse in the Fruitvale district they described as “a labyrinth of artist studios”, had been under investigation for several months. They said escape from the building, which had only two exits, might have been complicated because the first and second floors were linked by an ad hoc staircase made of wooden pallets.
By Saturday afternoon, a list of those missing, compiled by friends and family, had grown to about 35 people. Officials said that the nine bodies recovered were in areas accessible to rescue crews, and that they had not been able to search the rest of the smoldering, unsafe building for at least two dozen people still missing and feared to be dead inside. “We know that there are bodies in there that we cannot get to, that have been seen but not recovered,” Sergeant Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office said at an evening news conference. Others who were believed to be missing have been accounted for, he said, adding, “We have been able to put some families’ fears at ease.”
Earlier on Saturday, Sergeant Kelly said the authorities were “expecting the worst, maybe a couple dozen victims.” “It appears that people either made it out or they didn’t make it out,” he said. Firefighters arrived just before midnight on Friday, and the fire was still smoldering more than twelve hours later.
One survivor, Aja Archuleta, 29, a musician, was scheduled to perform at the electronic music party with her synthesizers and drum machines around 0100 and was working at the door when the fire broke out around 1100. “There were two people on the first level who had spotted a small fire that was growing quickly,” she said. “It was a very quick and chaotic build, from a little bit of chaos to a lot of chaos.” She added that “I have lost twenty friends in the past 24 hours.”
Family members of the missing expressed anguish over spending hours waiting to know if their relatives were inside. Daniel Vega, 36, said he was “infuriated” waiting to hear news about his 22-year-old brother, Alex Vega, who had not answered his phone Saturday morning. Vega said he had heard from a friend that his brother was at the party. “Give me some gloves. I’ve got work shoes. I’m ready,” Vega said. “Let me find my brother, that’s all I want.”
The building’s roof had collapsed, and the site was a dangerous scene of debris, beams, and other wreckage. The structure had a permit to function as a warehouse, but not as a residence or for a party. Officials said they were investigating reports that the building had also been used as a living space.
At the news conference, Mayor Libby Schaaf said: “This is complicated. And it’s going to take us time to do the investigation that these families deserve.”
The building, known as the Ghost Ship, located in the Fruitvale neighborhood, was the site of an event that was to feature a range of experimental and electronic music, performed by a synth musician drawing from the “black, queer diaspora” and others, as well as a visual installation. On Saturday morning, the event’s Facebook page said admission to the show was ten dollars for those who arrived before 1100 and fifteen dollars after that. By the end of the day, the pricing had disappeared and the page had turned into an emergency message board, as dozens of friends and family members posted about missing loved ones.
“A lot of these people are young people,” Sergeant Kelly said. “They are from all parts of our community.” Some of the dead may be citizens of other countries, he said.
Images from the building’s website depict a wooden studio filled with antiques, sculptures and curios. Old lamps, musical instruments, suitcases and rugs decorated the ornate space.
Emergency workers said they arrived to find the building filled with heavy smoke and flames. Bodies were found on the second floor of the building, Chief Teresa Deloach Reed of the Oakland Fire Department said Saturday.
Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland called the fire “an immense tragedy. In my career of thirty years, I haven’t experienced something of this magnitude,” she said.
Even without a full accounting, the fire was one of the deadliest in the United States in many years. In 2003, a hundred people were killed in a fire in a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island. An explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas in 2013 killed fifteen people.
Chief Deloach Reed said there were “no reports of smoke alarms going off.” At least two fire extinguishers were inside, she said.
On the event’s Facebook page, people distributed a spreadsheet that listed identifying information— age, height, weight, hair color, tattoos— and contact numbers for many of those unaccounted for.
Oakland’s music and art scene was already struggling with high rent prices. The city’s underground bands and artists live a semi-nomadic existence in search of warehouses, homes, and other spaces to show art, play music, and dance into the early hours.
Diego Aguilar-Canabal, 24, a blogger and freelance writer who lives in Berkeley, California and plays guitar in a band called the Noriegas, estimated he had been to three dozen house and warehouse parties over the past two years. “The basic idea is people want to do loud things late at night, and industrial space is really good for that because there aren’t many neighbors to complain,” he said. “There’s a lot of anxiety about income inequality and class warfare, and a lot of these artists are trying to do the best they can to have a community.”

Aguilar-Canabal had been to the Ghost Ship (image and map, above) once last summer, and remembered it as a dim and cluttered area with a “maze” of furniture, canvas paintings on the walls, and papier-mâché hanging from the ceilings (photo, above). “The reason we left was that it had only had one source of water, which was a sink, and the water tasted really gross,” he recalled. “We went to a corner store to get something to drink and were like ‘let’s just go home.’”
Aguilar-Canabal flew to Vancouver, Canada early Saturday morning, and first read about the blaze on Twitter. Instead of going to bed, he stayed up tracking the fire on social media until it was time to go to the airport. He spent most of the day looking for the names of friends who he thinks were killed, and calling Highland Hospital in Oakland.
“It’s just a really surreal experience to be refreshing a window to see if names are confirmed to be missing or not missing,” he said. “I’m keeping track of a couple names and hoping they end up being in a hospital.”

Rico says Fruitvale is close to where he used to live, but it wasn't the Vulcan, fortunately...