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Venezuela unrest death toll rises, Chavez statue destroyed

Volunteers, members of a primary care response team, walk together as demonstrators clash with police during a rally against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela. REUTERS/Marco Bello

By Andrew Cawthorne and Corina Pons

CARACAS (Reuters) – A 20-year-old Venezuelan protester died on Friday after being shot in the head, authorities said, taking fatalities from a month of anti-government unrest to at least 37 as the opposition geared up for more demonstrations.

Hecder Lugo was hurt during fighting between demonstrators and security forces in Valencia on Thursday that also injured four others, the local opposition Mayor Enzo Scarano said in a series of tweets.

The state prosecutor’s office, which keeps an official count of deaths since protests began against socialist President Nicolas Maduro in early April, confirmed he died after being shot in a protest.

Another 717 people have been injured and 152 are still in jail from the hundreds rounded up in widespread unrest around the volatile South American OPEC nation of 30 million people, according to the office’s latest tally.

There has been violence and widespread looting this week in Valencia, a once-bustling industrial hub two hours from the capital by road.

And in an incident loaded with symbolism, a handful of young men destroyed a statue of late leader Hugo Chavez in the oil-producing Zulia state, according to videos circulating on social media on Friday evening.

Footage shows the statue, which depicts Chavez saluting and wearing a sash, being yanked down to cheers in a public plaza before it is bashed into a sidewalk and then the road as onlookers swear at the leftist, who died in 2013 from cancer.

“Students destroyed this statue of Chavez. They accuse him, correctly, of destroying their future,” opposition lawmaker Carlos Valero said about the incident, which was also reported in local media. Reuters was unable to independently confirm it.

Venezuela’s opposition, which now enjoys majority support after being in the shadow of the ruling Socialist party since Chavez’s 1998 election win, says his successor Maduro has become a dictator and wrecked the economy.

Vowing to stay in the streets for as long as necessary, opposition leaders announced nationwide women’s marches for Saturday with the biggest planned for the capital Caracas.

Opposition lawmakers briefly unfurled a banner on Friday at the National Assembly, where they won a majority in 2015 thanks to voter ire over the recession, saying “Maduro Dictator”.

The president says they are seeking a violent coup with U.S. support, and is setting up a “constituent assembly” super body to shake up public powers, change the constitution, and possibly replace the existing legislature.

“President Maduro has made a big call to national dialogue,” Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez told diplomats at a meeting on Friday, showing them images of violence and vandalism on the streets caused by youths at the front of protests.

“They are not peaceful, the opposition leaders share big responsibility in these acts of extremism and vandalism.”

FATALITIES ON BOTH SIDES

Opposition protests have often started peacefully but degenerated into violence when security forces block marchers and masked youths fight them with stones, Molotov cocktails and fireworks shot from pipes turned into homemade mortars.

Fatalities have included supporters of both sides, bystanders and members of the security forces.

Gunshot wounds have been the most common cause of deaths.

The opposition is boycotting Maduro’s constituent assembly process, saying it is a ploy to keep him in power by setting up a body with mechanisms to ensure a government majority.

Having failed to trigger a referendum on his rule last year, the opposition is calling for delayed state gubernatorial elections to be held as soon as possible, and for the next presidential election slated for 2018 to be brought forward.

Polls show the ruling Socialists would badly lose any conventional vote due to four years of economic crisis that has led to debilitating food and medicine shortages.

While Maduro says opposition ranks include armed hoodlums, activists accuse the security forces of using excessive force including firing teargas canisters directly at people and allowing pro-government gangs to terrorize demonstrators.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles said on Friday that 85 members of the military in Caracas had been arrested for opposition “repression,” adding that their relatives had asked him to publicize the detentions.

“Cousin, it’s enough!” Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino’s cousin, Ernesto Padrino, wrote to him in an open letter.

He was following in the footsteps of the state human rights ombudsman’s son who surprised the country by publishing a video begging his father to “end the injustice.”

“Eighty percent of Venezuelans want elections as a way out of our nation’s grave economic and political crisis,” wrote Ernesto Padrino on Facebook.

“Sooner or later, the Venezuelan people will make you pay.”

(Reporting by Andrew Cawthorne and Corina Pons, additional reporting by Alexandra Ulmer, Andreina Aponte, and Diego Ore; Editing by Andrew Hay and Lisa Shumaker)

Venezuela death toll rises as foes protest Maduro’s power shakeup

Opposition supporters clash with riot police during a rally against President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Veron

By Andrew Cawthorne and Alexandra Ulmer

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan security forces battled protesters who lit fires and hurled stones on Wednesday in rage at President Nicolas Maduro’s decree to create an alternative congress, with another fatality taking the death toll to 34 during a month of unrest.

In a familiar pattern in protests against the socialist government, thousands of opposition supporters rallied peacefully at first before being blocked, sparking fights around the city between masked youths and soldiers.

One 17-year-old protester died in the melee from an object that hit him in the neck, said Gerardo Blyde, a district mayor for the opposition.

“A young man with all his life ahead. He simply fought for a better country,” Blyde said on Twitter of the case which the Venezuelan state prosecutor’s office said it would investigate.

More than 200 people were injured as fights raged in various parts of the capital, Blyde and another opposition mayor said.

Marchers tried to reach the National Assembly legislature, where the opposition has a majority, to protest Maduro’s creation of an alternative “popular” congress viewed by foes as a ruse to dodge free elections and cling to power.

They were pushed back by National Guard troops with teargas, armored vehicles and riot shields on the Francisco Fajardo highway, which runs through the middle of the city.

“They are mobilized as if this was a war,” said opposition leader Henrique Capriles, broadcasting from the scene via the Periscope app favored by protest leaders.

On the opposition side, youths donned gas masks and bandanas, throwing Molotov cocktails and using slingshots to fire stones. They protected themselves with homemade shields, painted in bright colors and decorated with slogans like “Liberty!” and “Murderer Maduro!”

Local media published footage showing two protesters being knocked over by a National Guard vehicle. Both survived.

With demonstrators erecting barricades and police helicopters whirring overhead, at least three opposition lawmakers were injured, activists said. “An injury by the dictatorship is a badge of honor,” tweeted First Justice legislator Freddy Guevara, who said he was hit by a tear gas canister.

Opposition leaders have vowed to stay in the streets after Maduro’s announcement on Monday that he was creating the “constituent assembly” which is empowered to rewrite the constitution.

“It’s a tool to avoid free elections. We’ve been marching 18 years but this is our last card. It’s all or nothing,” said pensioner Miren Bilbao, 66, with friends and family on the Francisco Fajardo highway.

While the opposition was keeping up momentum, it was unclear how the protests could achieve their aims after demonstrations in 2014 failed to dislodge Maduro. Back then, however, the opposition was splintered, protests failed to spread to poor areas and the economy was in better shape.

“WE DESERVE PEACE”

Maduro, 54, the former bus driver who narrowly won election to replace Hugo Chavez in 2013, says his foes are seeking a violent coup with the connivance of the United States and encouragement of international media.

Officials say violence around the protests, and the opposition’s unwillingness to hold talks, left Maduro with no choice but to shake up Venezuela’s governing apparatus.

During a meeting with election officials on Wednesday, Maduro said a vote for the new assembly would take place in coming weeks. At least half of the members would be chosen by grassroots groups including workers, indigenous people and farmers, and the rest in a vote, Maduro has said, although details remained fuzzy.

“The new constituent process starting today will consolidate the Republic and bring to the nation the peace that we all deserve,” he said, clutching a pocket-size blue constitution and later dancing to the beat of drums.

“The Republic must defend itself from terrorism,” he added, joining supporters in a rally downtown after presenting his plans to the national election board, which backed the move.

The opposition is seeking to hold state gubernatorial elections delayed from 2016 and bring forward the 2018 presidential vote amid a devastating economic crisis.

It says Maduro’s use of a “constituent assembly” is a cynical ploy to confuse citizens into thinking he has made concessions when in fact he is seeking to tweak the system to avoid elections the Socialist Party would likely lose.

Maduro’s move has drawn condemnation from the United States and some Latin American countries, including regional powerhouse Brazil that labeled it a “coup.”

An influential group of U.S. senators filed sweeping legislation on Wednesday to address the crisis in Venezuela, including sanctioning individuals responsible for undermining democracy or involved in corruption.

But backing has come from regional leftist allies including Cuba. Bolivia’s President Evo Morales said Venezuela had the right to “decide its future… without external intervention.”

On top of the latest death on Wednesday, officials announced four more fatalities on Tuesday.

Two people died when a vehicle tried to avoid a protester barricade in the state of Carabobo, Venezuela’s Civil Protection agency tweeted late on Tuesday.

Angel Moreira, 28, who was on a motorbike on a highway leading out of Caracas, also died after a vehicle ran him over while trying to avoid a demonstration, the state prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday.

In addition, the office said Yonathan Quintero, 21, had been killed while a group was “damaging” a business after a protest in the Carabobo state capital of Valencia.

Energy Minister Luis Motta said late on Tuesday “a right-wing terrorist plan to paralyze the country” had cut a submarine cable that provided electricity to the palm-tree-studded Caribbean island of Margarita, plunging it into darkness.

The president of state oil company PDVSA, Eulogio Del Pino, said “terrorists” had captured a company tanker truck in the western state of Lara, tweeting pictures of it in flames.

The opposition scoffs that an inept government blames Maduro critics as a smokescreen for rampant crime and lack of maintenance that have Venezuela’s infrastructure creaking.

(Additional reporting by Diego Ore, Andreina Aponte, Corina Pons, Brian Ellsworth, Deisy Buitrago and Eyanir Chinea in Caracas, Isaac Urrutia in Maracaibo, Maria Ramirez in Puerto Ordaz, and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Diane Craft and Andrew Hay)

Death toll in Venezuelan protests reaches nine

Mourners look at the coffin of Paola Ramirez, a student who died during a protest, in her wake in San Cristobal, Venezuela April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Eduardo Ramirez

CARACAS (Reuters) – A man was killed in a protest in the Venezuelan capital on Thursday night, an official said on Friday, marking the ninth death in a wave of sometimes violent demonstrations against President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

Melvin Guaitan died of a bullet wound in the slum of Petare, municipal mayor Carlos Ocariz said via Twitter. Local media reported looting and street clashes with security forces in poor areas of Caracas late on Thursday and early Friday.

“We demand that those responsible for this incident are investigated and punished,” wrote Ocariz, without providing additional details.

Opposition leaders have promised to keep up their protests, demanding that Maduro’s government call regional elections that have been delayed since last year, free almost 100 jailed opposition activists and respect the autonomy of the opposition-led Congress.

They are calling for community-level protests across the country on Friday, a white-clad “silent” march in Caracas on Saturday to commemorate those killed in the unrest, and a nationwide “sit-in” blocking Venezuela’s main roads on Monday.

Maduro’s government is so far resisting the pressure of the most serious protests in three years. Ruling Socialist Party leaders describe the protesters as violent hoodlums who are damaging public property and disrupting public order to overthrow the government with the support of ideological adversaries in Washington.

“This wounded and failed opposition is trying to generate chaos in key areas of the city and convince the world that we’re in some sort of civil war, the same playbook used for Syria, for Libya and for Iraq,” said Socialist Party official Freddy Bernal in an internet broadcast at 1:00 a.m.

A Reuters witness heard gunshots and tear gas canisters being fired late into the night on Thursday in the working class Caracas neighborhood of El Valle, with numerous businesses in the morning showing signs of having been looted.

Local media reported similar situations in other parts of the city.

The OPEC nation’s economy has been in free-fall since the collapse of oil prices in 2014. The generous oil-financed welfare state created by late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s predecessor, has given way to a Soviet-style economy marked by consumer shortages, triple-digit inflation and snaking supermarket lines.

Public anger at the situation spilled over last month when the Supreme Court, which is seen as close to the government, briefly assumed the powers of the Congress. The protests were further fueled when the government barred the opposition’s best-known leader, two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, from holding public office.

(Reporting by Eyanir Chinea and Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Italy pulls last of 29 bodies from avalanche hotel

rescue workers pulling last of bodies from italy avalanche disaster

PENNE, Italy (Reuters) – Rescuers have pulled the last of 29 bodies from the wreckage of a hotel in central Italy a week after it was razed by an avalanche, the national fire brigade said on Thursday.

With the discovery on Wednesday night of the bodies of one man and one woman, everyone known to have been at the Hotel Rigopiano when it was flattened has now been accounted for.

Eleven people survived the disaster, which struck in the wake of heavy snowstorms and several powerful earthquakes on Jan. 18. Nine of them, including four children, were extracted shivering after spending days under the crushed masonry.

“When we managed to pull out the survivors it gave us hope and energy,” civil protection agency official Luigi D’Angelo said at an operation base in nearby Penne.

“We never lost that hope, all the way until the end, until we had searched the last centimeter of the hotel.”

Rescuers had to use pickaxes and heavy earth-moving equipment to shift snow and debris and break through the reinforced concrete roof.

Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the tragedy, which Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said would establish if anyone was to blame.

Many guests had wanted to leave before the wall of snow struck but were unable to do so because the access road was already blocked.

The opposition 5-Star Movement criticized cuts to local government funding and the scrapping of a rural police force. They said the national emergency prevention and response system had been ill-prepared.

“It isn’t the snow’s fault,” the 5-Star wrote on founder Beppe Grillo’s blog. “The failure of those who should have prevented this disaster and helped the communities in difficulty is clear to everyone.”

Gentiloni has promised to launch an emergency decree and add to reconstruction funds set aside after earthquakes tore through the heart of Italy last year.

(Reporting by Antonio Denti and Roberto Mignucci in Penne and Isla Binnie in Rome; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Richard Lough)

Rescuers pull more bodies from Italian hotel ruins, protests in Rome

italian firefighters working to rescue people from avalanche

By Antonio Denti and Isla Binnie

FARINDOLA, Italy (Reuters) – Rescuers on Wednesday pulled more bodies from the ruins of an Italian hotel razed by an avalanche as people who lost homes and livelihoods in deadly quakes last year protested in Rome.

Rescuers using pickaxes and mechanical diggers pulled six bodies from the rubble of Hotel Rigopiano a week after it was flattened by a wall of snow, raising the death toll to 24.

No one has been found alive since early Saturday and hopes of finding more survivors are fading. Five people are still missing after the Jan. 18 avalanche struck in the wake of heavy snow storms and a flurry of powerful earthquakes.

Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said he would launch an emergency decree next week and add to money already set aside to rebuild after the area was devastated by tremors last year.

His government has earmarked 4 billion euros in this year’s budget and Gentiloni said he had told Jean Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission which oversees national finances, that they would allocate more.

“It is up to us to make sure that once the disaster is past, further injustice is not created,” he told parliament.

He has said he wants to give more power to disaster management authorities and the earthquake response will require “billions more” euros, but has given no further details.

As the premier spoke, residents of quake-struck towns including Amatrice, where 300 people died last August, marched towards parliament to protest the handling of the crisis.

“No one has done anything,” protester Maria Domenica D’Annunzio said. “A thousand cows have died. The firemen had to take them away with cranes. There are all these abandoned farmers who are still living in caravans surrounded by 2.5 meters of snow.”

Eleven guests and hotel workers survived the avalanche in the Gran Sasso national park. Snow on the road had prevented many from leaving before the disaster struck.

Prosecutors in nearby Pescara have opened an investigation which Gentiloni said would establish whether the emergency response had malfunctioned and if anyone was responsible for the tragedy.

“I share the desire to find the truth but I don’t share a certain desire which I see spreading, for scapegoats and avengers,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Gabriele Pileri, Cristiano Corvino and Crispian Balmer in Rome; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Italy avalanche death toll rises to 14

Italian firefighters working to save those buried in avalanche

FARINDOLA, Italy (Reuters) – Rescuers working through the night pulled five more bodies from the wreck of a hotel in central Italy that was razed by an avalanche last week, bringing the death toll to 14, the national fire brigade said on Tuesday.

The latest bodies – three men and two women – were recovered hours before families of victims were due to hold the first funerals of those killed in the avalanche.

Eleven people so far have been rescued from in and around the hotel in the Gran Sasso national park, some of them surviving for two days under ice and rubble.

But 15 people are still missing after a wall of snow crashed into the four-storey building last Wednesday, hours after earthquakes shook the region.

Prosecutors in nearby Pescara have opened an investigation into the avalanche.

(Reporting by Sasa Kavic and Roberto Mignucci in Farindola and Isla Binnie in Rome; Editing by Philip Pullella and Hugh Lawson)

Thai floods cause 200-kilometer traffic tailback; death toll up to 25

Bridge damaged by floods in Thailand

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Flash floods in southern Thailand washed out a bridge on the country’s main north-south highway on Tuesday, backing up traffic for 200 km (125 miles) as the death toll from days of unseasonable rain rose to 25, media reported.

More than 360,000 households, or about a million people, have been affected by the floods that have damaged homes and schools and affected rubber and palm oil production, the Department of Disaster Prevention and industry officials said.

Television pictures showed abandoned cars submerged in murky waters in Prachuap Khiri Khan province where a torrent washed out a bride on the main road linking Bangkok to the south, causing the 200 km tailback, media reported.

The railway link to the south, and Malaysia, beyond has been severed for days.

Thailand’s rainy season usually ends in late November but this year heavy rain has fallen well into what should be the dry season.

Southern Thailand is a major rubber-producing area and the wet weather has hit production. Palm oil plantations have also been flooded, industry officials and farmers’ groups said.

In Nakhon Si Thammarat, one of the worst-hit provinces, television footage showed villagers commuting by boat.

“It’s like a big pond,” said resident Pattama Narai.

Nakhon Si Thammarat has had 493 mm of rain in the past seven days, 426 mm more than the average for this time of year, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Flooding regularly occurs in the May-November rainy season.

In 2011, widespread flooding that began in the north and flowed down to Bangkok crippled industry, killed more than 900 people and slowed economic growth to just 0.1 percent that year.

(Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre, Juarawee Kittisilpa and Jutarat Skulpichetrat; Editing by Robert Birsel; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Egypt arrests four in connection with church bombing, death toll rises

Egypt work on restoration of Cathedral

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian police have arrested four people in connection with the bombing that killed dozens of Christians at Cairo’s Coptic Christian cathedral last month, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.

At least 25 people, mostly women and children, were initially killed when a bomb exploded in a chapel adjoining St Mark’s Cathedral, the seat of the Coptic papacy. The Health Ministry said on Wednesday the death toll had climbed to 28.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said after the attack that the bomber was a man wearing a suicide vest and that security forces were seeking two more people believed to be involved.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement it had arrested one of the two along with three others who were part of the same cell and who planned to carry out more attack. One man is still on the run, it said, without saying when they were arrested.

Police also seized improvised explosive devices, shotguns, and ammunition with those it arrested, the ministry said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing and threatened more attacks against Christians but Egypt has sought to link the attack to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The ministry said in December that Mahmoud Shafik, the alleged bomber, was a supporter of the group. It said on Wednesday that one of the people it arrested was also a supporter of the Brotherhood but it did not mention if the others had any affiliation.

The Brotherhood has condemned the attack and accused Sisi’s administration of failing to protect the church. Sisi has dismissed the accusation.

Sisi took power in 2013, deposing Mohamed Mursi of the Brotherhood, and has since outlawed the group as part of a crackdown in which hundreds of its supporters have been killed and thousands jailed. An Islamist insurgency in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has gained pace since and pledged allegiance to Islamic State in 2014.

Orthodox Copts, who comprise about 10 percent of Egypt’s 90 million people, are the Middle East’s largest Christian community.

(Reporting by Mostafa Hashem and Mahmoud Mourad; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Indonesian quake over 100 killed, 700 injured, numbers keep rising

Rescue workers try to remove a victim from a collapsed building following an earthquake in Lueng Putu, Pidie Jaya in the northern province of Aceh, Indonesia December 7, 2016 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara

By Biyan Syahputri and Darren Whiteside

PIDIE JAYA, Indonesia (Reuters) – Indonesian medical teams struggled on Thursday to treat scores of people injured in a 6.5 magnitude earthquake a day after more than 100 people were killed in the worst disaster to hit the province since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The quake toppled hundreds of buildings and left thousands of people homeless. The province of Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra island, has declared a two-week state of emergency.

“All the victims were crushed in collapsed buildings,”said Sutopo Nugroho, a spokesman for the national disaster management agency.

Rescuers in Aceh’s Pidie Jaya regency focused their search on a market complex, which suffered more damage than other parts of the town of 140,000.

The quake flattened most of the Pasar Meureudu market building, which housed dozens of shops, and rescue teams used excavators and their bare hands to pull out 23 bodies.

Victims included a bridegroom and guests due to attend a wedding party when half the complex collapsed.

“It is so sad for our family, we had prepared everything,” said Rajiati, the mother of the bride. Both she and her daughter survived.

Nugroho said many buildings in the area withstood the quake but those that collapsed were probably not built in accordance with regulations.

Experts also blamed poor construction.

“Initial information shows that single storey houses without reinforced internal brick or masonry walls have been damaged severely or collapsed,” said Behzad Fatahi, a geological expert at the University of Technology in Sydney.

Indonesia’s disaster agency said 102 people had been killed, with more than 700 injured.

The quake was the biggest disaster to hit the province since a Dec. 26, 2004, quake and tsunami, which killed more than 120,000 people in Aceh. In all, the 2004 tsunami killed 226,000 people along Indian Ocean shorelines.

The 2004 disaster centered on its western coast near provincial capital Banda Aceh. Wednesday’s quake hit the east coast, about 170 km (105 miles) from Banda Aceh.

Television images showed some patients being treated in tents in car parks because hospitals were full. But rescue officials said aid and heavy machinery was arriving.

The Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) handed out food, water and blankets, and helped provide shelter.

“Many patients are being treated in disaster tents and we’re starting to get doctors coming in from other areas so that is a help,” Arifin Hadi, PMI’s head of disaster management, said by telephone.

Indonesia sits on the so-called Pacific ring of fire and more than half of its 250 million people live in quake-prone areas, according to the disaster agency.

(Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor and Fergus Jensen in JAKARTA; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

Death toll rises to 36 from California warehouse inferno

Firefighters work inside the burned warehouse following the fatal fire in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California.

By Curtis Skinner and Peter Henderson

OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) – The death toll rose to 36 on Monday from a blaze that engulfed a converted warehouse during a dance party in Oakland, California, the greatest loss of life from a U.S. fire in over a decade, as searchers sifted charred ruins being treated as a crime scene.

Authorities said they were certain to find more bodies in the gutted building and were still trying to account for about 50 people reported missing by loved ones, while ruling out any drastic climb in the tally of deaths.

“If you have a best friend out there, please hug your best friend,” Franchesca Dickerson, a 21-year old hairdresser, told a candlelight vigil, as she held a collage of images of a friend who died in the blaze.

“I’d give 50,000 years to hug mine,” added Dickerson, who was to have joined her childhood friend, 19-year old Michalea Gregory, at the party, but changed plans because of work.

The cause of the fire, which erupted late on Friday in a sprawling two-story building leased to an artists’ collective, has yet to be determined.

Officials have said arson was not immediately suspected. But charges ranging from involuntary manslaughter to murder could feature in a potential criminal case, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley told a news conference.

Possible safety violations were expected to be one aspect of the investigation, with city officials having said the site was already under investigation for reports of illegal construction.

Investigators from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives identified an “area of interest” on the ground floor that was still out of reach, said Sergeant Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.

He described the spot as being at the rear of the warehouse, where makeshift studios and cubicles were clustered.

O’Malley said fire investigators and a task force from her office were working with recovery teams inside the wreckage to preserve any potential criminal evidence as they seek signs of victims and clues to the origin of the blaze.

Debris was being removed “bucket by bucket,” said Deputy Fire Chief Darren White, but a large construction crane at the scene required nearby electricity lines to be shut down for several hours, as a precaution.

FIRE HAZARDS

The nature of the fire has raised questions about possible building code violations. City officials have said the warehouse, known as the Ghost Ship, was already under scrutiny, with an inspector having visited on Nov. 17.

Municipal authorities also cited reports of people living in the structure, although it was barred to residential use. Some of those who entered the warehouse called it a potential fire trap.

The first floor, housing an artist cooperative, the Satya Yuga Collective, was a warren of partitioned studio spaces and rooms crammed with furniture, musical instruments and rugs, according to survivors, city officials and photographs posted on social media before the fire.

Two recreational vehicles believed to have been used as living quarters and work space were found parked on the ground floor inside, Kelly said.

The dance party was held on the second floor, which partially collapsed when the roof gave way. Survivors said flames spread quickly and billowing thick, black smoke blinded and choked those struggling to flee.

The 10,000-square-foot (929-sq-m) building lacked sprinklers or smoke detectors, and wooden pallets partially formed a makeshift stairway between first and second floors, officials said. It had just two exterior doorways.

Nancy Pike, 60, (L) and William Anderson, 3, put flowers at a sidewalk memorial near the burned warehouse following the fatal fire in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California

Nancy Pike, 60, (L) and William Anderson, 3, put flowers at a sidewalk memorial near the burned warehouse following the fatal fire in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California, U.S. December 5, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

YOUNG VICTIMS

The recovery of three more bodies took the confirmed death count to 36, making the blaze the deadliest in the United States since 100 people perished in a 2003 nightclub fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island.

“We absolutely believe that the number of fire fatalities will increase,” Oakland Fire Battalion Chief Melinda Drayton told reporters. But Sheriff Gregory Ahern later said he was “not anticipating any more huge numbers” of victims.

By Monday afternoon, 33 of the dead had been identified and authorities were notifying families, said Ahern, adding that three victims were from Finland, South Korea and Guatemala.

Most victims had been in their 20s and 30s, but some were younger, officials said. The site was known as a “safeplace” haven for young members of the city’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, Kelly said.

With many bodies burned beyond recognition, families were asked to preserve items that might contain DNA to help identification. Kelly said some people died of smoke inhalation.

Officials were unsure of the numbers present when the fire erupted. One survivor has estimated them at 60 to 70.

The warehouse was one of many converted lofts on the east end of San Francisco Bay in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, a mostly Latino district where rents are typically lower than elsewhere.

(Additional reporting by Laila Kearney in New York, Timothy McLaughlin in Chicago, Deborah Todd in Oakland and Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Calif.; Writing by Daniel Wallis and Steve Gorman; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter Cooney)