Jessica Guynn

USA TODAY

OAKLAND — The mood on Friday was “vibey, positive” at the Ghost Ship, a popular warehouse-turned-artist collective and party space. “It was chill,” said Chris Nechodom, a photographer and filmmaker from nearby Richmond, Calif.

He’d been invited to a party by a film-industry friend who lived there. Nechodom had said he needed to be on a movie set at 7 a.m. Saturday, so his friend suggested: come to the warehouse, party and sleep over. He parked across the street.

It was Nechodom's first time there, and the place was like a maze: bristling with do-it-yourself construction and separator walls built from reclaimed wood. When you walked in, an S-turn greeted you, then a corridor that took you all the way to the back.

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Nechodom, 30, was hanging out with friends downstairs, in one of many couch-filled nooks, when the fire broke out at the back of the building Friday night. It quickly moved to the front. He saw smoke floating near the ceiling and wondered if it was coming from a fog machine upstairs.

"When it got thicker and we started hearing people yell, ‘Fire!’ we got up,” he said Sunday. “Even then I was thinking, ‘This is probably contained or something.’"

He left the nook and turned toward the back of the building. "The whole back was on fire and it was curling up on the ceiling,” he said, “and it was creeping toward the front."

People were running toward the blaze with fire extinguishers, but he didn't see any smoke detectors or hear any alarms. As far as he could tell, there were no sprinklers.

"All that wood in there, it was just a lot of smoke,” he said. And the place wasn't very well ventilated, so the smoke filled it up faster than the fire spread.

Inhaling smoke, Nechodom yelled for his friend and headed toward the exit. He stayed there, yelling for others to come toward him, but soon the room got too hot — and he’d taken in too much smoke. He went outside and tried to guide others to the exit from there, yelling as they shuffled out.

Many emerged, coughing, but others couldn't find their way through the smoke. Like Nechodom, for many partygoers it was their first time there, so they’d gotten disoriented in the maze.

His friend made it out less than a minute later as "a huge bellow of black smoke” blew out 10 feet from the entrance. A loud noise emanated from every crevice. “I don't know if it was collapsing or what," he said.

A few more people crawled out, but authorities said Sunday afternoon that at least 33 partygoers were confirmed dead. The death toll could still climb as investigators comb through the scene. A final toll could be days away, fire officials said.

Nechodom came back Sunday to get his car, but it had been towed.

"It didn't hit me until the next morning when the numbers started coming out," he said.

Two days later, he said he's trying to be strong for friends who lost loved ones.

"I'm just praying and thanking the higher power that I made it out, and as many people made it out that did."

Contributing: Greg Toppo, USA TODAY. Follow Jessica Guynn on Twitter: @jguynn