At Least 24 Dead in California Building Fire; Trump: Companies Won't Leave U.S. "Without Consequences"
JOE JOHNS, CNN ANCHOR: Good afternoon. I'm Joe Johns in for Fredricka Whitfield, taken a well-deserved day off. We're going to begin in Oakland, California, that's where officials are expected to give an update later this afternoon on recovery efforts following this weekend's tragic fire which have been called one of the deadliest in the city's history. Here's what we know right now. Officials say they found 24 dead so far from the fire but investigators fear the death toll could go much higher. The fire broke out as an electronic dance party was getting under way in a converted warehouse space. Emergency responders found most of the victims on the second floor. So far the recovery has been painstaking in the last 12 hour; only about 20 percent of the building has been searched. CNN's Stephanie Elam is in Oakland for us. And Stephanie, as we wait for the update, we're hearing from at least one of the survivors. What's he saying?</s>STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, definitely. And yes, we were just listening because they were telling us that they were going to have a press run and just delayed it. But they gave us a little bit more information, Joe, and what they're saying is that it is really painstaking; they're using buckets and shovels to go through the space to look for people. And they said some of the people are easily identifiable and some of the people who lost their lives, it's much harder for them to identify them and that is part of the reason why it's taking so long. But when you take a look at the stories coming out of the people who did survive this fire, there's one man, Bob Mule, who is in there, he did not go to the party, he was in his space preparing to paint when the fire broke out. Listen to his emotional recount of what happened for him.</s>BOB MULE, FIRE SURVIVOR: When I ran back to get my camera, I saw Pete, he's a larger fellow. I guess as he was climbing down from the loft in his space, he'd fallen and broken his ankle and was calling out to me. And he's like, I broke my ankle. I need you to pull me out. I need you to pull me out. I need you to pull me out. And so I just immediately took his arm and I was pulling him out. I just got to a certain point where there was all this stuff like blocking my path with him. And I wasn't able to just, like, pull him out. And the fire was just getting too hot. And the smoke was just getting too bad. And I had to -- I had to -- and I had to leave him there. And I wasn't able to get him out.</s>ELAM: Just a harrowing detail there for him on getting out of the building. And at this point, we know that they've only made it 20 percent of the way through this building. So still a lot more to go. But because the roof collapsed onto the second floor and all of the debris that is there, it is slowing this process down. We're hoping to learn more. They're saying they potentially could have some names of the victims after that they notify the next of kin. We may learn some of those names today, Joe.</s>JOHNS: Stephanie, looking at those pictures, it looks like a very large space. And the authorities have always been very specific about the number of people they think were inside that space. Do you have any idea how they come up with estimating about 50 people inside?</s>ELAM: Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the people that were in there that got out. I think that's talking to them and then other people who've been looking for people and trying to discern how those people were there. But just knowing people who were using the space and were frequenting the space and then on top of it, the fact that you had a party, people who they may have said that they knew somebody who's going to the party, that's how they're trying to figure out who was inside at the time.</s>JOHNS: Just a horrific story developing there in Oakland, California. Thank you so much, we will be checking back with you, Stephanie Elam. And now joining me on the phone is James McMullen. He's a former California State chief fire marshal. Chief only about 20 percent of the burned building has been searched, 80 percent to go. Can you tell us what the crews are facing as they tried to search for victims of this fire?</s>JAMES MCMULLEN, FORMER CHIEF FIRE MARSHALL, CALIFORNIA STATE (voice- over): Well, as you search a building that's been burned such as that, you have to move very slowly and very cautiously for several reasons: One is falling debris. One is building collapse. One is the fact that you don't want to disturb evidence that's critical for the fire investigation. You want to ascertain that you don't miss any bodies or critical matters that are going to be used as evidence. And so the key thing is you got to move slowly and you got to preserve the scene at the same time so that the fire investigators can, in fact, determine the area of origin and subsequently the point of origin and then determine the cause. It's critical to know that before you determine what caused the fire, you have find out where the fire started. And so once you determine generally where the fire started, called the area of origin, you hone that down to the point of origin where the fire precisely started. And at that point then, you determine what are the causative factors within that point of origin and go through a process of elimination to determine the cause. And in addition, they're still searching for bodies, they still have hot spots. And so they have a real task and they're moving cautiously and slowly, which is what they should be doing.</s>JOHNS: So let's back up a little bit as we look at some of the picture, the smoke and the fire and the flames from overnight. Look, one of the things we know is that even after this fire was out, it was still deemed not safe enough for emergency workers to enter. Does that in and of itself tell you something about this structure that they were dealing with?</s>MCMULLEN: Well, there's no question that the fire will always, of course, damage your structural supports. And so whether or not the building is structurally sound is something that has to be determined before we can let rescue workers or investigators make entry into there because we certainly wouldn't want a building to collapse that's had a fire on the workers that are trying to solve the crime or rescue the people.</s>JOHNS: Also, there have been some past concerns raised about this space, this warehouse building. Among them, there have been reports of the typical thing like trash, which I think is understood and pretty clear but there have also been some reports out there about internal illegal structures. Apparently, that sounds like things inside the building that enforcers deemed to potential problem. What does that mean?</s>MCMULLEN: Well, it means illegal occupancy. Occupancy means use of the building in according to the codes, the building and fire code. What you do inside the building is its occupancy. And when you have an illegal occupancy, it means you've occupied it without the proper permits from the agencies that issued those permits such as the building department, the fire department. When you have people that are living inside, that becomes a residential occupancy. When you have a business, that becomes a different kind of occupancy. And then when you go in and you have an assembly such as this gathering people, that's an assembly occupancy, which is a third type of occupancy. And so I've heard -- I'm sorry, I was just going to say that I've heard that they were in there occupying, living there, that's what the news accounts I've heard so far have said and it wasn't clear if it's a residential occupancy.</s>JOHNS: Right. It certainly sounds like they had a lot going on there in that building. At the news conference earlier today, here's what the battalion chief had to say. Take a listen and I'd like you to weigh in.</s>MELINDA DRAYTON, BATTALION CHIEF, OAKLAND FIRE DEPARTMENT: Our goal is to work collaboratively with public works to breach the B side, it would be the left side of the warehouse building, the fire building, in order to gain access for our fire fighters and Alameda County Sheriff to be able to remove debris systemically from the building to the vacant lot next to the building, literally, bucket by bucket in a methodical, thoughtful, mindful and compassionate way. We had firefighters with basically coveralls and buckets and shovels taking bits of debris out into the vacant lot to then be loaded into dump trucks and removed to an off-site location.</s>JOHNS: So you listen to that and here's a picture of rubble being taken out bucket by bucket. There are also reports that the stairs were incinerated. And it sort of begs the question, how is it that you could have so much fire without people discovering it and starting to try to get out of there, any idea?</s>MCMULLEN: Well, what's important to remember is that all fires, no matter how big, such as this one, became a gigantic fire, no matter how big they ultimately become, start very small. A short of a molotov cocktail or an explosion, you will always have a fire starting and what's called the incipient stage which is the beginning of the fire when it's very small. And at some point in that area, if you see the fire and you can get to it soon enough and you can put it out with a fire extinguisher. And I understand that one of the witnesses had attempted the use of fire extinguisher and he couldn't get the extinguisher to operate. And that is also potentially a violation of the code. And need for maybe improving what we do in the way of fire extinguishers. But as soon as you can get the fire extinguisher on a fire, in the fire service we call putting in the wet stuff on the red stuff, the sooner you can do that, the sooner you can put the fire out. Once it begins to extend, it burns in what it's called combustible loading. And this, I understand, the building had a lot of combustible loading where people brought in combustibles and had artist displays and so forth and it will move very rapidly. The code also requires that you have interior finished materials that mitigates fire spread. And you probably heard about the fire in East Warwick, Rhode Island -- West Warwick, Rhode Island make it -- well, the Station nightclub fire wherein we had interior finished materials that burned very rapidly, polyurethane foam. And that's one of the things the code regulates and this maybe the case here. We had interior finished materials that didn't meet the code standards.</s>JOHNS: James McMullen, thanks so much for that. Standby because we're going to want to come back to you when we get more information. Turning to politics in just a little while and keeping our eye on Oakland, Donald Trump is expanding his list of potential secretary of state picks. We will tell you who he's now considering and perhaps why? Stay with us.