Search and recovery operations have ended in the early morning of Wednesday for victims of the worst fire in Oakland, a city in northern California, on the U.S. west coast.

     While fire crews and heavy machinery were gone, few workers remained at the site after midnight to remove debris from the two-story warehouse, where a total of 36 people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, were killed in the fire that started from Friday night through Saturday morning.

     Also remained were shrines put up by mourners with flowers, candles, notes and others along sidewalks leading to the structure, named "Ghost Ship" by Derick Ion Almena, the man who turned the warehouse into the site of an arts collective, a residence for his family and reportedly some other tenants, and an underground party venue.

     At the time of the fire, an electronic music party was going on, supposedly from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m.

     Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach-Reed said there was no sign of fire alarms and no evidence of a sprinkler system.

     Winding down the search was expected, as officials in the past two days repeatedly said it was unlikely to find more bodies, and the operations cleared 90 percent of areas within the building as of Tuesday afternoon, and precipitation was likely starting Wednesday across San Francisco Bay Area, including Oakland on the East Bay.

     At 1:00 a.m., a young couple came up at one of the shrines. The woman wrote a few lines on a book there, about her prayers for the dead; and the man said he knew somebody among the victims through a friend.  Enditem

Source:
courtesy of XINHUA NEWS AGENCY

by XinHua News Agency

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