Search for bodies in burned warehouse resumes

The death toll in the Oakland warehouse fire that ripped through a building known as the “Ghost Ship” has risen to 36, and fire authorities expect to find more victims once recovery efforts continue, officials said at an early Monday press briefing.

“I am still in disbelief, but I hope my friends who were in the Oakland Ghost Ship fire and are still unaccounted for are okay”, Joanna Blanche Lioce, a bartender at Bottom of the Hill, a popular music venue in San Francisco, wrote on Facebook. Ahern said there are “still two areas of concern” they have not searched yet because of safety issues. The search was halted just after midnight, Drayton said, adding that once it resumes, “we absolutely believe that the number of fatalities will increase”. She said potential charges could range from involuntary manslaughter to murder.

CBS2’s Kara Finnstrom reported officials have now identified at least 11 victims who died in the blaze.

The families of those feared dead have been asked to preserve DNA evidence, such as hair or tooth brushes. It may take weeks to identify everyone killed, because the flames have charred some bodies so badly they’ll have to be identified through dental records. It is one of the worst USA fires in recent memory, bringing to mind the 2003 blaze in West Warwick, Rhode Island, that killed 100 people at a nightclub called the Station. She said firefighters had not yet reached the location where the fire began, and investigators were far from determining the cause of the blaze.

Derick Ion Almena, who ran the Oakland Ghost Ship, took to Facebook to make a series of whiny comments that ignored the immensity of the horrific tragedy. She lived in several places before moving to the Bay Area, according to her family. She called police herself three times in one week, and other government agencies, including Child Protective Services, paid visits to the warehouse, she said. Almena was criticized by members of the community who said they’d warned him previously about the risk of fire.

“I don’t ever want to say “was” but you know what I mean – he is in the prime of his life”, his brother, Daniel Vega, told NBC News. “All of that has now been proven”.

Almena did not immediately respond to emails or calls to numbers associated with him. Authorities declined to talk about the manager, saying they were focused on recovering the bodies and consoling families.

Hours after the fiery massacre, he assured the world that he and his wife Micah and their three children were fine.

Relatives, friends and former colleagues said Almena loved to surround himself with followers, but seemed to care little for their well-being. An improvised staircase constructed of wooden pallets was the only way to get from the first floor to the second, where the fire started, Kelly said.

“There was no electricity, and it was freezing in there”, she said.

Thirty-six bodies have been found in a fire-destroyed warehouse after a party in Oakland, California. “Minutes later, the power went out, so everyone who was inside was trapped in the dark”.

In a world that demands its inhabitants to be a certain way, think a certain way, or live a certain way, we gravitate to the spaces that say: Welcome.

Draven McGill, 17, who was a student at Ruth Agawa High School.

“It’s not clear right now”, she said.

She said she had been drawn to the space by a Craigslist ad that promised cheap living space.

“She was a kind and attractive person who had the strength to be her true self even when she knew that was not an easy path”, Ben Fritz, 39, told The Associated Press. She now works part-time for AlterNet, and freelances for a number of publications nationwide.

Ewing, an Oakland software developer, learned something was wrong when Jo’s friends knocked on his door Saturday morning.