District attorney vows "no stone unturned" to look into Oakland

A prosecutor vowed there would be "no stone unturned" to look into the warehouse fire in Oakland, California, that has led to the confirmed death of 36 people as of Monday afternoon.

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, appearing in public for the first time since the deadly fire on Friday night, told a press briefing that investigators would try to find evidence of criminal liability and then decide who would be liable.

Charges to be brought against those liable, O'Malley said, could be homicide or involuntary manslaughter. Declining to go into details and reassuring her determination to seek justice for victims and their families, she said experts would examine debris from the two-story warehouse and extra charges would be possible based on evidence.

Investigators had already interviewed "several people" related to the fire, she added.

At the same briefing, Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern said of the 36 bodies recovered from the scene, including three added to the total on Monday morning, 33 had been "tentatively identified." Among them, three were foreign nationals from Finland, South Korea and Guatemala respectively, and their families had been notified.

Noting that about 75 percent of the site was cleaned, Ahern said earlier "we can't locate any other deceased victims" and "we are not anticipating any more huge numbers."

However, three days after the disaster took place, nobody knows how many people were inside the building.

The worst fire in the history of Oakland, in northern California, on the U.S. west coast, prompted Mayor Libby Schaafa and other city officials to go into defensive mode in face of criticism that the city ignored complaints from residents about the specific building and similar situations in the city.

Schaafa said priorities for now are to recover victims and help their families.

The warehouse, known as "The Oakland Ghost Ship," was permitted only for storage purposes. However, the structure in an industrial neighborhood of East Oakland was converted into art studios, a party venue and probably a residence. Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach-Reed said on Saturday there was no sign of fire alarms and no evidence of a sprinkler system.

The fire started at about 11:30 p.m. on Friday and continued into the Saturday morning, trapping people at what appeared to be an underground music event.

Overnight, authorities released names of seven victims that had been positively identified. All of them were in their 20s and 30s and Californians, including 4 Oakland residents and 2 others from nearby cities in northern California. The name of an additional victim, a 17-year-old minor, was withheld.

An internal wall of the building was found unstable on Sunday night, forcing firefighters to stop searching for victims for several hours. The operation resumed in the morning, and a big crane was brought in to help with the work.

A series of photos were presented to the press in the afternoon, to show what a firefighter called "heat residues" possibly indicative of the origin of the fire, the extensive damage to the structure and a huge amount of debris inside the warehouse.

source: Xinhua