Fire victims honored
OAKLAND, Calif. — As investigators searched for signs of a crime in the fire that killed at least 33 in an Oakland warehouse during a late-night dance party, survivors and teary-eyed friends of those who perished viewed the charred building from a distance, placed flowers on several small memorials and embraced each other to mourn their losses.
Bouquets of sunflowers, single white roses, lilies and carnations were stuck in chain-link fences, votive candles burned on sidewalks and Post-it notes paid tribute to the missing and the dead in the most lethal building fire in the U.S. in more than a decade.
Kai Thomas and a group of red-eyed classmates from an arts high school in San Francisco pressed against police tape Sunday near the street corner where the “Ghost Ship,” a warehouse converted to artist studios and illegal living spaces, rapidly went up in flames late Friday, taking the life of a friend.
Three of the boys had been in the cramped building, Thomas said, but one got separated from them 30 seconds before someone yelled, “Fire.”
“It was just really smoky and hard to see,” said Thomas, a high school junior who wasn’t there, but recounted what he had been told by others who didn’t want to speak. “They jumped off the second-floor balcony and ran out.”
The boys waited for their 17-year-old friend for more than three hours, but he never emerged.
They wouldn’t give his name, but the victims included a 17-year-old, as well as people from Europe and Asia and some over 30, said Alameda County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ray Kelly said. Officials had identified eight of the dead — at least seven of them using fingerprints, but told family members of the missing that they may need to use DNA for more difficult identifications.
“When we started this investigation, if you had told us that you would have 33 victims, we wouldn’t have believed you,” Kelly said. “I don’t know how many people are left in there.”
Lists of the missing circulated and many of those who had been unable to reach friends in the past two days had given up hope when authorities said people either escaped without injury or died inside.
