OAKLAND, Calif. – The Latest on a deadly fire in a converted warehouse in Oakland, California (all times local):

Officials in Oakland, California, say the death toll has risen to 24 from a fire that ripped through a converted warehouse.

Alameda County Sheriff's Sgt. Ray Kelly announced the new figure early Sunday. He says officials anticipate that the number will rise.

Oakland Battalion Fire Chief Melinda Drayton says fire crews worked through the night to clear debris from the gutted building.

The converted warehouse was known as the "Ghost Ship." Those who lived there or visited often say it was an artist workspace and illegal home for a rotating group of a dozen or more residents.

Firefighters struggled to get to bodies in the charred rubble Saturday.

The fire started about 11:30 p.m. Friday during an electronic dance music party. Officials believed 50 to 100 people may have been in attendance. </s> The death toll from a fire which tore through a late-night electronic music party in California has increased to 24.

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The ferocity of the blaze at the converted warehouse in Oakland has made the charred structure difficult for emergency crews to search, and officials said they expect the death toll to increase further.

Oakland battalion fire chief Melinda Drayton said firefighters worked through the night to clear debris from the gutted building.

The fire started at about 11.30pm on Friday during the party, and it is believed up to 100 people may have been in attendance.

Follow @thescotsman for updates throughout the day </s> The death toll in the fire which ripped through a late-night rave in California has risen to 24.

Officials said they expect to find more bodies as the search continues – with a “significant number” of people still missing.

Only 20 per cent of the building has so far been searched after fire crews worked through the night to clear debris. The search for bodies is likely to continue for another 48 hours.

The converted warehouse known as the ‘Ghost Ship’, in Oakland, California, was being used to host a dance party when the fire broke out at 11.30pm on Friday (7.30am on Saturday UK time).

It is so far unclear what caused the fire in the building. Officials believe there were between 50 to 100 guests inside at the time.

Former residents who lived at the warehouse said the building had few exits and a makeshift staircase.

Sergeant Ray Kelly of Alameda County sheriff’s department said the blaze could have been sparked by a cigarette.

He said people either escaped from the building or died inside, where the only way down from the second story was via a stairwell made of wooden pallets.

Sgt Kelly added: “We know there are bodies in there that we can't get to - that have been seen but not recovered.” </s> OAKLAND, Calif. - The death toll in a fire that devastated an Oakland, California, loft building during a weekend dance party has climbed to 30 people and is expected to rise further as recovery teams push deeper into the charred ruin, authorities said on Sunday.

The remains of the 30 victims were found as authorities sifted through the debris-filled shell of the two-story converted warehouse being used by an artists' collective.

"That is an astronomical number," Sergeant Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, told a news briefing. "We're still not done."

Kelly warned earlier that the number of fatalities would likely rise in what fire officials called the deadliest blaze in the Bay Area city's history. He said names of the victims would be released "in the coming hours" after their families were notified.

"In regards to the amount of people that are still missing, yes, it's a significant number, Kelly said.

The fire erupted about 11:30 p.m. on Friday (0730 GMT on Saturday) during the party featuring electronic dance music that dozens of people attended.

Only 20 percent of the building had been searched in the past 12 hours, Melinda Drayton, battalion chief at the Oakland Fire Department, said on Sunday morning. She said the origin of the fire had yet to be determined and the cause was unknown.

The recovery operation had been delayed for hours until workers could enter safely. The roof had collapsed onto the second floor and in some spots, the second story had fallen onto the first. (Additional reporting by Tim Mclaughlin in Chicago; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Alan Crosby and Peter Cooney) </s> OAKLAND: The death toll from a fire at a California warehouse where a rave party was taking place rose to 33, with the authorities saying they had no idea how many more bodies they may find.

“When we started this investigation, if you would have told us we would have 33 victims, we wouldn’t have believed you,” Sergeant Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department told reporters, adding that crews had searched less than half of the gutted building.

“I don’t know how many people are left in there. We have no idea how many people were in that building that night… We’re expecting the worst and hoping for the best in regards to how many more victims we find.”

The fire in Oakland, near San Francisco, broke out about 11:30 pm Friday (0730 GMT Saturday) at the cluttered warehouse where artists and students worked and lived, even though the structure wasn’t licensed for such use.

The electronic dance music party, with between 50 and 100 guests, also took place without a permit.

Although the cause of the fast-moving blaze remains under investigation, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said the district attorney had opened a criminal investigation as a precaution to preserve options as the case unfolds.

“You have to understand that the scope of this tragedy is tremendous,” she said. “We have many, many witnesses to interview. We are in the process of doing that.”

Eight victims have been identified based on fingerprints so far, ranging in age from 17 to 35.

Some were from Europe and Asia, and the Oakland authorities are working with the State Department to contact foreign governments, Kelly said, declining to reveal which countries.

Bodies were found scattered throughout the warehouse, known locally as Oakland Ghost Ship.

“We’re finding people throughout the entire square footage of that structure,” Kelly said. “It’s so random. We’re finding victims where we least expect it.”

The authorities on Sunday asked relatives of the missing to “eliminate future delays” in identifying victims by preserving such items as hairbrushes and toothbrushes for DNA samples.

“We will ask for them as we need them,” said Captain Melanie Ditzenberger of the sheriff’s department coroner’s bureau.

Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed has said the interior of the warehouse was maze-like, “filled end-to-end with furniture, whatnot, collections.”

“There wasn’t a real entry or exit path,” she said.

Images published online show artwork, pianos and wooden objects throughout the building, which helps explain why the blaze raced through the structure despite firefighters’ arrival within three minutes.

Firefighters also said the building appeared to have had no sprinklers or smoke detectors.

Officials said the roof collapsed onto the second floor, which was connected to the ground floor only by a makeshift system of wooden pallets.

A dozen bodies were found in an area in the middle of the building, Oakland Fire Battalion Chief Melinda Drayton said.

Firefighters had taken every precaution to treat human remains with respect as they cleared debris bucket by bucket, she added.

The fire was the deadliest incident in Oakland since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in northern California, which killed 63 people.

The deadliest nightclub fire in the United States in recent decades occurred in 2003, when pyrotechnic effects by the rock band Great White set off an inferno at The Station nightclub in Rhode Island, killing 100 people.

Oakland, a city of 420,000, was once deemed largely unsafe but is now home to a more affluent population attracted by affordable rents and proximity to San Francisco. AFP </s> At least nine people died in a blaze that broke out during a party in a warehouse late Friday night in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to fire officials.

Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloche-Reed says at least another 13 people are unaccounted for as of Saturday morning.

The fire started about 11:30 p.m. Friday. It tore through the building during an event featuring musician Golden Donna’s 100% Silk West Coast tour, the East Bay Times reports.

Oakland firefighters tweeted video of flames pushing through the roof.

Fire officials said the building had no sprinklers.

Authorities told KTVU-TV about 50 people were inside the building, which houses a group of artists and their studios.

“It was too hot, too much smoke, I had to get out of there,” Bob Mule, a photographer and artist who lives at the building and suffered minor burns, told the East Bay Times. “I literally felt my skin peeling and my lungs being suffocated by smoke. I couldn’t get the fire extinguisher to work.”

People used a Facebook page Saturday to post and seek information on family and friends who may have been in the building.

Oakland police urged those concerned about missing people to call the Alameda County Sheriff’s Coroner’s Bureau at 510-382-3000.

The office said the coroners were also at the scene Saturday morning and unavailable for comment. </s> var _ndnq = _ndnq || []; _ndnq.push([’embed’]);

The latest Sunday update on the number of victims and details about the investigation is here. Follow our ongoing coverage of the Ghost Ship live-work warehouse fire tragedy on this page, where the most recent stories are on top followed by earlier coverage.

OAKLAND — Doomed partygoers trapped on the second floor of a crudely converted warehouse screamed, “Help us! Help us!” as one of the deadliest structure fires in Oakland’s history ripped through a tinderbox of makeshift living spaces and a labyrinth cluttered with art late Friday night, killing at least two dozen people and possibly more.

On Sunday morning, Alameda County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ray Kelly confirmed that they have “24 deceased victims of this fire.”

“We anticipate the number of victims will rise,” Kelly said.

The blaze broke out at an electronic music party at a Fruitvale district live-work space occupied by an arts collective, and firefighters late Saturday were combing through the burned building in search of victims — a process they say may take 48 hours and require bulldozers and cadaver dogs.

Dozens of people waited for news about their loved ones late Saturday night at the coroner’s office.

“It’s like waiting for your name to be called, and if your name is called, it’s going to be the worst day of your life,” Alameda County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ray Kelly said. “It’s very tense in there.”

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Editorial: Oakland warehouse inferno was preventable As the horrific scene unfolded Friday night, people banged on windows when they couldn’t escape down the main path to safety: a steep, rickety staircase cobbled together with wooden pallets and plywood.

Survivors described a chaotic scene of people desperately trying to help their friends but overcome by fire and smoke.

“It was too hot, too much smoke, I had to get out of there,” said Bob Mule, a photographer and artist who lives in the building and who suffered minor burns. “I literally felt my skin peeling and my lungs being suffocated by smoke. I couldn’t get the fire extinguisher to work.”

When he escaped, he could see someone calling for help from the second-floor window, and tried to get a ladder, “but they jumped out the window.”

The building known as the “Ghost Ship” was zoned as a warehouse but had been the subject of a number of complaints about blight and illegal structures inside. On Saturday, city officials acknowledged that inspectors had knocked on the door of the warehouse two weeks ago but left when no one answered.

Outside the smoldering structure Saturday, Oakland police asked for descriptions of tattoos and piercings to help identify the nine bodies removed from the building Saturday as well as another two dozen or more who remain missing, including college students, artists and musicians attending a dance party upstairs. A 10th body had been found as of early Sunday, according to media reports.

It took about four hours to bring the blaze under control; at one point, the roof collapsed. The building had no sprinklers, Oakland fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed said, and crews did not hear any smoke detectors going off when they arrived.

“We still have to do a more thorough search of the building, and we don’t know the potential number of other victims,” Reed said. No firefighters were reported injured while battling the blaze.

Kelly said emergency responders were prepared Saturday night for a “mass casualty event” that could involve “several dozen fatalities.” He also said that “several dozen” people who were initially reported missing have since been located and are safe.

The plan is to “disassemble the building piece by piece and place the debris into bins,” Kelly said. Heavy equipment could be seen and heard working on the building into Saturday evening.

Authorities were bringing in bulldozers, excavators, cadaver dogs and remote control equipment to find bodies buried beneath a collapsed second floor and roof and hidden within a clutter of pianos, camping trailers, artwork and old furniture.

“It’s very bad wreckage, twisted debris. It’s like a maze: wires, beams, wood,” Kelly said. “It’s all fallen on top of each other. There are places and crevices we can’t get in to.”

Like 9/11 in New York, few victims of the fire were taken to the hospital with injuries, he said. “People either made it out or didn’t make it out.”

Families of the missing gathered at an Alameda County Sheriff’s Department building on Saturday waiting for word. Dan Vega, whose brother Alex is missing, says the wait is unbearable.

“I have my work boots, I have gloves,” Vega said. “I just want to find him.”

Chris, a local musician who asked to use only his first name, said he was in the bathroom when the fire broke out. He walked out into a room filled with thick smoke. The lights had gone out and it was pitch black inside the warehouse space, where only a few moments earlier a group of 40 to 50 people were listening to a DJ play music and waiting for the show to start.

Immediately, people were screaming and trying to direct others to safety. With no lights, and smoke filling the warehouse, it made it difficult for people to find their footing on the somewhat irregularly shaped staircase, which Chris said appeared to have been built in three sections.

“We did that for as long as we could, but when you’re in a burning building, you’re being surrounded by a completely hostile environment,” he said. “It was kind of a free for all.”

Chris said he ran to his car to grab a flashlight and ran back into the building, crawling on his hands and knees, but he couldn’t get to the staircase or help move people to safety. The smoke, which he said hit him “like getting slapped in the face,” made it impossible for him to see or to breathe.

Firefighters started arriving as the flames grew larger and started erupting out of the side of the building.

“I felt so helpless,” he said as he watched the firefighters douse the flames.

The warehouse is one of numerous buildings in Oakland that have been illegally converted into artists collectives that have not been properly inspected, according to City Councilman Noel Gallo. Still, young hipsters looking for cheap, creative communities seek them out to survive in a city where rents are skyrocketing to accommodate an influx of highly paid tech workers.

The “Ghost Ship” was under investigation by city building inspectors just weeks ago amid reports of blight and illegal structures inside. When they knocked on the door to get inside the building Nov. 17, however, no one answered, so they left, according to city officials.

The building is owned by Chor N. Ng, of Oakland, but former residents say Derick Alemany and his wife, Micah, were raising three young children there, although they weren’t in the building when the fire broke out. The couple were the creative force behind the labyrinthine menagerie and collected monthly rent from other artists of between $300 and $600. They held dance parties with live electronic music and charged at the door to help raise money for rent.

In a Facebook post Saturday that was excoriated by readers, Alemany wrote, “Everything I worked so hard for is gone. Blessed that my children and Micah were at a hotel safe and sound. … it’s as if I have awoken from a dream filled with opulence and hope … to be standing now in poverty of self-worth.”

Alemany had advertised on Facebook and Craigslist looking for renters seeking “immediate change and loving revolution,” who enjoyed “poetics, dramatics, film, tantric kitten juggling and nude traffic directing.” He described it as 10,000 square feet of vintage redwood and antique steel “styled beyond compare.”

His 1951 purple Plymouth remained parked Saturday in front of the building that burned so hot, the “Ghost Ship” letters painted across the front had all but melted away.

“They are ex-Burning Man people and had their kids in the place — three kids running around with no shoes,” said DeL Lee, 34, who lived there for three months two years ago. “It was nuts.”

He described the place as a filthy firetrap, with frequent power outages, overloaded outlets, sparks and the smell of burning wire. A camping stove with butane tanks served as the kitchen, and a hole had been chiseled through the concrete wall to access the bathroom at the adjoining automotive repair shop next door.

The staircase, which had two switchbacks to get to the second floor, was built of pallets, plywood and footholds — like a ship’s gangplank — and was like “climbing a fort” to get up and down, say people who had visited the building.

Pianos and old couches doubled as room dividers. Pallets covered with shingles and elaborate trim formed sculptural walls. Often, Lee said, the place was filled with the sounds of sawing and hammering as Alemany continued to build.

“They’d be up all night, til 10 a.m., playing on the piano, banging on the floor, singing — it was crazy,” Lee said.

On Saturday, a candlelight vigil was held at Chapel of the Chimes. The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office also became a painful gathering place of sobs and embraces.

Kimberly Gregory, of South San Francisco, said she was watching the news about the fire, thinking how sad it was, when she got a call from her daughter’s friend asking if Michela, a student at San Francisco State, was safe.

“What do you mean?” Gregory asked. She and her husband raced to Oakland, where they were met by Mayor Libby Schaaf.

Joel Shanahan, the electronic musician who performed as Golden Donna at the Ghost Ship when the fire broke out, confirmed on Facebook that he was safe. “But like many people he is heartbroken and has several friends among the missing,” a post on his Facebook page read.

But Micah Danemayor, who was performing at the warehouse Friday, remains among the missing, along with his girlfriend. Karen Tate, who is close to the Danemayor family, fears they are both dead.

“His passion was the performances. He made his life work so he could do that,” Tate said. “They moved in together, and the next day they perished together. It’s so tragic.”

Staff writers Harry Harris, Sam Richards, Malaika Fraley and Katrina Cameron contributed to this story. </s> OAKLAND, California — Recovery teams have found 24 bodies in the charred ruins of an Oakland, California, loft building after a fire broke out during a weekend dance party, and the death toll is expected to rise, authorities said Sunday.

Sergeant Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, said two dozen bodies were located as authorities sifted through the debris-filled shell of the two-story building, which was used by an artists’ collective.

He said the death toll would likely rise in what fire officials called the deadliest blaze in the city’s history.

Only 20 percent of the building had been searched in the past 12 hours, said Melinda Drayton, battalion chief at the Oakland Fire Department.

Firefighters have gone through the building searching the debris, “bucket by bucket,” Drayton told a news conference on Sunday morning.

“It was quiet, it was heartbreaking,” she said. “This will be a long and arduous process.”

Authorities said on Saturday that nine bodies were initially discovered inside the shell of the structure and that about 25 people were believed to be missing. On Sunday, officials did not update the number of people who were not accounted for.

The fire erupted at about 11:30 p.m. local time Friday during the party featuring electronic dance music that dozens of people attended.

The recovery operation and investigation into how the blaze started had been delayed for hours until workers could enter safely on Saturday evening.

The roof had collapsed into the second floor and in some spots, the second story had fallen into the first. </s> OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Fire tore through an Oakland warehouse converted into artist studios during a late night dance party, killing at least nine people, and officials said Saturday that the death toll could rise as high as 40.

Officials said people either escaped from the cluttered building or died inside, where the only way down from the second story was via a stairwell constructed entirely of wooden pallets.

“It appears that either you got out or you got trapped inside,” said Alameda County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly.

Firefighters used chain saws and axes Saturday to cut through the debris of the cluttered building in a gritty neighborhood of this San Francisco Bay Area city, where the fire broke out about 11:30 p.m. Friday.

Oakland fire chief Teresa Deloche-Reed said at least another 25 people were unaccounted for in what authorities were calling the most deadly building fire in the city in recent memory. The victims were believed to be young people in their 20s, Kelly said. He said as many as 40 may have perished and that the coroner is preparing for a “mass casualty event” that could include victims from other countries.

The warehouse was known as the “Oakland Ghost Ship.” Its website showed pictures of a bohemian, loft-like interior made of wood and cluttered with rugs, old sofas and a garage-sale like collection of pianos, paintings, turntables, statues and other items.

The website included advertisements for various electronic music parties. On Friday night, there was an event featuring musician Golden Donna’s 100% Silk West Coast tour.

Panicked friends and family posted messages on the group’s Facebook page trying to find out if their loved ones were among the dead. Those searching for the missing were sent to a local sheriff’s office, where Dan Vega was anxiously awaiting news. He had been unable to find his younger brother or his brother’s girlfriend. Vega said he was not sure if the two were at the party Friday night but that his brother likes to go to raves and he had not been able to reach him Saturday. His girlfriend’s car was still parked at a transit station in San Bruno, south of San Francisco.

Fighting tears, Dan Vega said he’s frustrated authorities hadn’t been able to tell him anything about his 22-year-old brother.

“I just want to go over there. I have my work boots on, I’m ready to go,” Dan Vega said. “Just give me some gloves. I’ll help out any way, shape or form, I don’t care. This is infuriating. I don’t know where my brother’s at. I just want to find him.”

It was not immediately clear what started the fire, but there did not appear to be sprinklers in the building, Deloche-Reed said. She said 50 to 100 people were believed to have been at the party when the fire started and that clutter “made it difficult for people to escape.”

The warehouse was partitioned into artist studios and was packed with furniture, mannequins, statues, lamps, and other objects and did not have a clear entry or exit path, the fire chief said.

“There is still a large portion of the building that still needs to be searched,” she said. “There is large timber and debris that will need to be removed and it’s going to have to be removed in a slow and methodical way.”

The fire caused the building’s roof to collapse and investigators were having trouble entering parts of the warehouse to search for any remaining bodies because the structure was deemed unsafe, Deloche-Reed said.

One survivor said he struggled to find a working fire extinguisher.

“It was too hot, too much smoke, I had to get out of there,” Bob Mule, a photographer and artist who lives at the building and suffered minor burns, told the East Bay Times. “I literally felt my skin peeling and my lungs being suffocated by smoke. I couldn’t get the fire extinguisher to work.”

Oakland police urged those concerned about missing people to call the Alameda County Sheriff’s Coroner’s Bureau at 510-382-3000.

The office said coroners were also at the scene Saturday morning and unavailable for comment.

Associated Press writers Olga R. Rodriguez and Juliet Williams in San Francisco, Jonathan J. Cooper in Oakland and Adam Kealoha Causey in Phoenix contributed to this report.
The confirmed death toll in Friday night's warehouse fire in Oakland, California rises to 33 with several people still missing.