this fire happened. what s the first thing you re thinking, jim? well, what s going to happen to find that out, whether accidental from a heater, accidental from hooking or it could be incendiary, in other words, set by a human hand, a human hand unintentionally or set by a human hand intentionally. it could be a cigarette, a candle, arson. all that is yet to be determined. such a tragedy for these families and all these young artists. it s a horrible case, really. atf s national response team will dig that out. not a big scene for them to investigate. the issue of course is all the people inside who have to be removed and that s got to be done and done appropriately. 30 so far. that takes a little time.
wood. these are concrete. exactly right. being an arson investigator my whole life and bomb and arson doing that my whole life, my father being a firefighter for 33 years, i don t even go in a hotel i don t count the doors to the fire exit, i don t know where every fire exit is, i don t know how to get out i always do that. everybody needs to pay attention to that stuff. tragically a lot of people died here. it moved real fast. a lot of them probably died from the smoke. they probably got smoke inhalation before the fire got to them. but the fire load de in this building, you see this tremendous fire lode. that s your furniture, your carpet, your drapes, all the wood construction, all of that s combustible materials that will burn very hot. of course inside as you point out the cinderblock, it keeps it in. what s so hazardous now for the teams recovering the people inside also for the investigators is those steel trusses as you see them going across the warehouse, we normally would
least. authorities beginning to investigate what started the fire. and you heard the conversation that we were having there with russell about what sort of heating sources they have. jim kavanagh, retired atf special agent in charge. we talk a lot about catastrophes. this one is tough for similar reasons to tore incidents. in this case we have someone trying to do something good and this happens. looking for affordable housingihousing, staying in these collectives. you heard when i was talking with russell, on a night it was hitting the 40s, right, if a winter month, trying to keep warm, how do you do that? i heard there are propane tanks. we don t know the source and how
top story out of oakland, california. 30 people now confirmed dead. we got that information just within the last hour. this after that massive fire ripping through a warehouse in oakland friday night. investigators will continue to carefully search through debris for several more days we re hearing now. at this hour, only about 40% of the building has been searched. they have p the majority of it to go through. right now the cause of the fire is still being investigated. we ll get you more updates throughout this hour as we get hem. now to another breaking news story. north dakota, a major decision reached regarding the dakota access pipeline within the last 30 minutes. the secretary of the army corps of engineers telling the standing rock sioux chairman that the current pipeline route will be denied and will not now run near the standing rock reservation. big news there. nbc s tammy leitner at the site of the protest in north dakota.
workers in there today. we spoke to a survivor who was inside who knew about this building before he went in. i want to play some sound just about their thoughts on whether or not this was safe going to that party last night. i ve been in plenty of spaces like that and i always think about safety and stuff, but fire never crossed my mind. i was thinking this floor is a little it s all kind of diy. i saw fire extinguishers around. i kind of assumed there were smoke detectors but i honestly didn t hear any alarms. reporter: another presser, we expect the mayor, we expect the sheriff s department again to release even more information about the progress of these workers as they continue the hard work of recovery and identification then investigation. richard? steve patterson, thank you for that reporting and detail. appreciate that.