Not knowing was bad, but finding out for sure may be worse.
A woman from Lakewood is one of nine additional people identified by authorities as having died in last week’s fire in Oakland.
She’s one of two fire fatalities who were from the Los Angeles area.
Friends and family of 21-year-old Vanessa Plotkin, who was attending UC Berkeley, had been posting on Facebook desperate pleas to locate the student who had been missinig after the blaze.
Plotkin was identified late Tuesday night by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Bureau as one of the 36 people who perished in Friday night’s warehouse fire, along with Santa Monica native and UC Berkeley graduate David Cline, who was previously identified.
“We just received word that my brother, David Cline, passed away in the Oakland Fire,” Cline’s brother Neil Cline wrote Sunday on his Facebook page. “To all of you, thank you. Thank you for your kindness, help and love. To David, we love you. You will be with us always.”
Plotkin’s father, Gary Plotkin, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the family was desperate to locate her after she had not been heard from since about 11 p.m. Friday. Plotkin sent out a text saying she planned to go to a party in Oakland, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported.
“We’re beside ourselves,” Gary Plotkin said. “This is just like a nightmare. I can’t believe this.”
The fire inside the warehouse at 1305 W. 31st St. broke out Friday night while most of the partygoers were on the second floor of the building listening to a concert. The only way out of the building was through the first floor and the fire trapped many of the victims who couldn’t make it through the downstairs labyrinth of artist work spaces and flames, authorities said..
Artists came to live and work in the building — known as the Oakland Ghost Ship. The Alameda County District Attorney’s office has begun a criminal investigation into the cause of the fire, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said Sunday.
The victims of the fire ranged in age from 17 to their 30s, authorities said. The fire is reported to have been the deadliest in Oakland history and the seventh deadliest U.S. building fire in the past 50 years.
—City News Service