MOORE, Oklahoma (Reuters) – Rescue efforts in the tornado-ravaged Oklahoma City suburb of Moore continued through the night into Wednesday morning, with officials increasingly confident that everyone caught in the disaster had been accounted for.

The massive tornado that tore through the area on Monday wiped out blocks of houses, killed at least 24 people and injured about 240.

Jerry Lojka, spokesman for Oklahoma Emergency Management, said search-and-rescue dog teams would search on Wednesday for anybody trapped under the rubble, but that attention would also be focused on a huge cleanup job.

“They will continue the searches of areas to be sure nothing is overlooked,” he said, adding: “There’s going to be more of a transition to recovery.”

After a long day of searching through shattered homes that was slowed by rainy weather, Oklahoma County commissioner Brian Maughan said it seemed no one was missing.

“As far as I know, of the list of people that we have had that they are all accounted for in one way or another,” he said.

As he spoke on Tuesday evening, dog teams and members of the National Guard were changing shifts to work through the night.

The death toll of 24 was lower than initially feared, but nine children were among the dead, including seven who died at Plaza Towers Elementary School which took a direct hit by the deadliest tornado to strike the United States in two years.

Emergency workers pulled more than 100 survivors from the debris of homes, schools and a hospital after the tornado ripped through the Oklahoma City region with winds exceeding 200 miles per hour, leaving a trail of destruction 17 miles long and 1.3 miles wide.

Plaza Towers Elementary was one of five schools in its path. “They (rescuers) literally were lifting walls up and kids were coming out,” Oklahoma State Police Sergeant Jeremy Lewis said. “They pulled kids out from under cinder blocks without a scratch on them.”

The National Weather Service upgraded its calculation of the storm’s strength on Tuesday, saying it was a rare EF5, the most powerful ranking on the Enhanced Fujita Scale

“I LOOKED UP AND SAW THE TORNADO”

The last time a giant twister tore through the area, on May 3, 1999, it killed more than 40 people and destroyed thousands of homes. That tornado also ranked as an EF5.

While Oklahoma Emergency Management’s Lojka said a flyover of the affected area on Tuesday showed 2,400 homes damaged or obliterated, with an estimated 10,000 people affected, the death toll was lower than might have been expected.

The toll was also a fraction of that of the 2011 twister in Joplin, Missouri, which killed 161 people.

In the hours following the storm, many more people were feared dead. At one point, the Oklahoma state medical examiner’s office said the toll could rise as high as 91, but on Tuesday officials said 24 bodies had been recovered, down from a previous tally of 51.

“There was a lot of chaos,” said Amy Elliott, chief administrative officer for the medical examiner.

Some ascribe the relatively low number of dead residents discovered in Moore, home to 55,000 people, to the fact many locals have small “storm safe” shelters, basically a concrete hole in the garage floor with a sliding roof that locks.

Billy McElrath, 50, of Oklahoma City, said his wife hid in a storm safe in their garage when the tornado hit.

She emerged unhurt even though the storm destroyed the 1968 Corvette convertible she had bought him as a birthday present, and crushed a motorcycle. “Everything else is just trashed,” he said as he loaded a pickup with salvaged goods.

Kraig Boozier, 47, took to his own small shelter in the Westmoor subdivision of Oklahoma City and watched in shock as a fan in the wall was ripped out.

“I looked up and saw the tornado above me,” he said.

When he came out after the storm, he helped a neighbor who had emerged from her own shelter move a car that was blocking the entrance to another neighbor’s shelter.

EARLY WARNING

Officials said another factor behind the surprisingly low death toll was the early warning, with meteorologists saying days in advance that a storm system was forming.

Once a tornado was forming, people had 15 to 20 minutes of warning, which meant they could take shelter or flee the projected path. The weather service also has new, sterner warnings about deadly tornadoes to get people’s attention.

Many of those who do not have a basic storm shelter at home, which can cost $2,500 to $5,000, have learned from warnings over the year to seek hiding places at home during a tornado.

Jackie Raper, 73, and her daughter, for instance, sought shelter in the bathtub in her house in Oklahoma City to survive the tornado.

“The house fell on top of her,” said Caylin Burgett, 16, who says Raper is like a grandmother to her. Raper broke her arm and femur, and bruised her lungs, Burgett said.

(Additional reporting by Carey Gillam, Lindsay Morris, Nick Carey, Brendan O’Brien and Greg McCune; Writing by Claudia Parsons and Jim Loney; Editing by Pravin Char)

There is that lasting image of Dick Trickle in the Winston 500 lighting up a cigarette while driving his stock car with his knees during a caution lap.

He places the cigarette through a hole he carved in his helmet for a quick toke and exhales.

The green flag hits and out the window goes the cigarette butt and back to racing goes Trickle.

“Dick always had a cigarette lighter in his car,” said fellow NASCAR driver Geoff Bodine.

Trickle was a unique driver with a unique name who found cult-like status before his death Thursday.

Trickle, whose larger-than-life personality and penchant for fun won him legions of fans despite a lack of success beyond the nation’s small tracks, died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said. He was 71.

The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said authorities received a call believed to be from Trickle, who said “there would be a dead body and it would be his.” Authorities tried to call the number back, but no one answered.

Trickle’s body was found near his pickup truck at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Boger City, N.C., about 40 miles northwest of Charlotte. Sheriff’s Lieutenant Tim Johnson said foul play was not suspected.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of Dick Trickle on his passing today,” NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France said. “Dick was a legend in the short-track racing community, particularly in his home state of Wisconsin, and he was a true fan favorite.  Personalities like Dick Trickle helped shape our sport. He will be missed.”

Trickle earned his reputation as a successful short track driver before joining the Winston Cup series and earning rookie of the year in 1989 at age 48.

He competed in more than 300 Cup races. Although he never won a Cup race and won only two Busch Series races, Trickle earned cult status in the 1990s.

Former ESPN anchor Keith Olbermann would regularly mention where Trickle finished after talking about each NASCAR race. It caught on and drew snickers from race fans around the country.

Bodine said there was only one way to describe Trickle, a native of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.

“Fun,” Bodine said. “Just plain fun.”

Trickle was never one to be told how to live his life.

“It’s all just sad,” Bodine said in a telephone interview. “We don’t understand why he would do this. Hopefully we will all learn why he would do that. There was something that triggered him to take his own life. We are all really saddened by this in the racing community.”

NASCAR does not keep track of short-track records, but according to the (Milwaukee) Journal-Sentinel, Trickle won more than 1,000 short-track races throughout the country during his prime. He was a seven-time winner in the regional ARTGO Challenge Series in the late 1970s and mid `80s. Trickle also captured the ASA AC-Delco Challenge Series in back-to-back years in 1984-85 before turning to Cup racing.

“Dick Trickle was one of the best race drivers of the `80s, no one knew how many races he won,” said Humpy Wheeler, the former president of Charlotte Motor Speedway. “He was right there with Red Farmer and other short track drivers — the wins kind of got so big that they blended into each other. He was a product of the rich Wisconsin soil, where they race eight races a week in the season, and he could win all of them.”

Wheeler said he asked Trickle to try NASCAR in the 1980s, but Trickle initially declined because he was so successful on the short track circuit.

“He could not make enough money then as he could on those Midwest tracks, so he deferred,” Wheeler recalled. “For a guy who really won at least 700 races, I could see why. In those days, unless you were a top Cup driver, you couldn’t win enough money to overcompensate for that.”

Trickle eventually did move to NASCAR, settling into Iron Station, N.C., where he lived for more than 20 years. Bodine said Trickle was full of stories and popular because of it.

“People everywhere knew his name,” Bodine said. “That’s why they used his likeness in that movie `Days of Thunder.’ He was such a character.”

The main character in that popular niche racing movie, played by Tom Cruise, was named Cole Trickle.

Bodine said that a few years ago he had to back out of a celebrity cruise for patients who were on kidney dialysis. He asked Trickle to fill in.

“He made such an impression on people on that ship that everyone wanted to know when Dick was coming back,” Bodine said. “They loved him. They tell me he was the last man to leave most of the bars on the ship and I believe it.”

Bodine also recalled inviting Trickle to compete in one of his bobsled events in 2004 at Lake Placid, N.Y.

He said Trickle went down the first time and crashed. After being cleared by doctors to continue, Trickle tried again and crashed in the same place.

“They were doing interviews with him on TV and he was like, `I don’t know what happened, I did the exact same thing I did the first time,”‘ Bodine said. “And we’re all looking at him like, `Hey Dick, maybe that was the problem.”‘

(www.guardian.co.uk), President demands punishment for IRS staff who targeted conservatives after official report finds tax exemption was deliberately delayed

arack Obama has pledged that Internal Revenue Service employees who discriminated against Tea Party groups will be held accountable after an independent watchdog heavily criticised the tax organisation for “inappropriate” behaviour.

Obama – who on Monday said he was withholding his final judgement until he saw the report – made his statement after the report was issued on Tuesday night. “I have now had the opportunity to review the treasury department watchdog’s report on its investigation of IRS personnel who improperly targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. And the report’s findings are intolerable and inexcusable.

“The federal government must conduct itself in a way that’s worthy of the public’s trust, and that’s especially true for the IRS. The IRS must apply the law in a fair and impartial way, and its employees must act with utmost integrity. This report shows that some of its employees failed that test.”

The president has directed the treasury secretary, Jacob Lew, “to hold those responsible for these failures accountable and to make sure that each of the inspector general’s recommendations are implemented quickly so that such conduct never happens again. But regardless of how this conduct was allowed to take place, the bottom line is it was wrong”.

The 47-page report by the independent treasury inspector generalreleased on Tuesday night confirmed suspicions by members of Congress and Tea Party groups over the last three years that conservative groups were being deliberately targeted by IRS employees.

The report found that applications by groups with names such as Tea Party, Patriots or 9/12 (the date of a Tea Party march on Washington in 2009) for tax exempt status were singled out and frequently subjected to delay, with some still not processed three years after the initial request.

The report, which will form the basis of a congressional hearing on Friday, is not the end of the scandal, with Republicans calling for resignations.

The review by the treasury inspector general for tax administration was conducted between June 2012 and February this year at the IRS headquarters in Washington and at the IRS unit involved in the delays, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The report said: “Early in calendar year 2010 the IRS began using inappropriate criteria to identify organisations applying for tax exemption status … Although the IRS has taken some action it will need to do more so that the public has reasonable assurance that applications are processed without unreasonable delay in a fair and impartial manner in the future.”

The report blamed ineffective management that “1) allowed inappropriate criteria to be developed and stay in place for more than 18 months, 2) resulted in substantial delays in processing certain applications, and 3) allowed unnecessary information requests to be issued”.

Of 296 total campaign organisation requests for tax exemption status, 108 were approved and 28 withdrawn by applicants. Although none was denied, 160 were open from 206 to 1,138 days and some are still not processed.

Of the 296 cases, 72 contained the name “tea party”, 11 contained “9/12″ and 13 contained “patriot”.

The inspector general made various recommendations including speedy completion of the remaining cases, better documentation of why certain applications are chosen for review and better training for staff ahead of an election cycle.

Before the release of the report, the attorney general, Eric Holder, announced that the FBI was investigating whether the law had been broken. “Those actions were, I think as everyone can agree, if not criminal, they were certainly outrageous and unacceptable,” Holder said. “But we are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations.”

The 2013 NFL Draft transformed 32 NFL rosters. Around The League will examine the aftershocks in our Draft Fallout series. Next up: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The Big Question: Have the Buccaneers built a playoff-caliber defense?

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were a schizophrenic operation on defense last season.

Nobody in the NFL was better at stopping the run, but Tampa’s secondary was a disaster. Despite an offense that pumped out 24.3 points per game, the defense allowed more (24.6), mainly because opposing air attacks shredded the Bucs for a league-worst 297.4 yards per outing.

Coach Greg Schiano did what he could with the players he had in 2012, but this year’s Bucs boast a completely remodeled secondary, anchored by Hall of Fame-worthy cornerback Darrelle Revis, acquired from the New York Jets. You can’t judge Tampa’s draft without accounting for Revis.

The Bucs didn’t rest there. Tampa used its first pick in the draft (at No. 43) on Mississippi State cornerback Johnthan Banks, who joins a defensive backfield that also includes Eric Wright and a pair of nasty safeties in free-agent pickup Dashon Goldson and the promising Mark Barron.

“We’re building it our way. We’re building it with our kind of people,” Schiano said after the draft, via FoxSportsFlorida.

The Bucs have a plan. They used last offseason to upgrade on offense. This time around, the defense has been re-imagined and — with a hungry Revis at the wheel — Tampa looms as a dark-horse candidate to steal the NFC South.

Three Takeaways

1. If any team is primed to mimic San Francisco’s midseason quarterback switch from a season ago, it’s the Bucs. I don’t care what the team says, it’s clear Josh Freeman — heading into a contract year — hasn’t won over Schiano. The drafting of Mike Glennon gives Tampa more than a project player. He arguably owns the strongest arm of any rookie passer. He’s not NFL-ready, not yet, but I fully expect Glennon to play if Freeman stumbles early.

2. General manager Mark Dominik is underrated. I love what the 49ers and Seahawks have done this offseason, but Dominik exhibited considerable guts pulling the trigger on Revis. His ability to seamlessly adapt from the Raheem Morris regime to Schiano shouldn’t be overlooked. Dominik will be the talk of the league by season’s end.

3. Until the Bucs can count on Da’Quan Bowers and Adrian Clayborn to play through a full campaign, pass-rushing help remains a priority. That means a pair of fourth-rounders — defensive end William Gholston and tackle Akeem Spence — could see plenty of early playing time. Disrupting Drew Brees, Matt Ryan and Cam Newton is a must inside this pass-happy division.

(CNN) – A day after a jury found her guilty of first-degree murder in the slaying of her ex-boyfriend, Jodi Arias will return to court Thursday to begin a phase that will move her closer to learning whether she will live or die.

During this part of the proceedings, the so-called “aggravation phase,” jurors will take an important step closer to that life or death decision.

“Now the odds, I think, shift somewhat in her favor, because it’s a very different thing to sentence someone to die than to convict them,” CNN senior legal analyst Jeffery Toobin said.

In a television interview minutes after the verdict was announced, Arias said she’d prefer a death sentence.

“I said years ago that I’d rather get death than life, and that still is true today,” she told Phoenix television station KSAZ. “I believe death is the ultimate freedom, so I’d rather just have my freedom as soon as I can get it.”

The comments prompted authorities to place Arias on suicide watch in an Arizona jail, according to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

“Until she is released from suicide protocol by Sheriff’s officials no further media interviews of inmate Arias will be permitted,” the office said in a statement.

Arias was stoic in court Wednesday. Her eyes briefly welled up with tears as a clerk announced that the jury found her guilty of first-degree murder for killing Travis Alexander in June 2008.

What’s next for Arias

Friend: “We have waited five years through the circus”

Alexander’s sisters cried and consoled each other after the verdict was read in the packed courtroom.

Crowds outside the courthouse erupted in cheers as news of the jury’s decision spread.

Several of Alexander’s friends told HLN they were relieved.

“It just feels so good … to finally have the truth and be vindicated,” said Dave Hall, choking back tears.

But that relief isn’t enough, Elisha Schabel said.

“It’s not going bring Travis back. He was such a light to this world,” she said. “And it’s important that we forgive Jodi, so she doesn’t have that power to destroy our lives.”

Another friend, Clancy Talbot, said she was grateful for the verdict.

“Looking at Jodi’s face, I think this is probably the first time in her life she has ever been held responsible for what she’s done, ever, and I think she’s in shock,” she said. “We have waited five years through the circus that Jodi has created.”

Trial moves into next phase

But the trial isn’t over yet, and Arias, who testified for 18 days during the trial, could speak to jurors again in court.

In the next step of the case, known as the aggravation phase, prosecutors will have a chance to present additional evidence and jurors will decide whether Alexander’s death was caused in a cruel manner.

If they decide that was the case, the trial would move to the penalty phase, where jurors would decide whether Arias should receive a death sentence.

If the jury decides on a death sentence, the judge is bound by that decision. But if the jury decides against the death penalty, the judge would have two options: sentencing Arias to life in prison without the possibility of parole or sentencing her to life in prison with the possibility of parole after at least 25 years.

There are currently 127 people on death row in Arizona. If Arias is given a sentence of death, she would be the fourth woman on death row in the state.

As jurors prepare for the sentencing phase of the criminal trial, family members of Alexander are preparing to file a civil wrongful death lawsuit, attorney Jay Beckstead told reporters outside the courthouse. Alexander’s siblings won’t speak publicly about the case until Arias is sentenced, Beckstead said, adding that the family is grateful to prosecutors and detectives for their work.

Massive crowd surrounds courthouse

Since Friday, jurors had been deliberating evidence surrounding a key question: Did Arias kill ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in self-defense? Or did she commit murder?

Alexander was stabbed repeatedly, shot and nearly decapitated five years ago. Arias says she killed him in self-defense after he attacked her, but the grisly slaying caused even some anti-domestic violence advocates to doubt her case.

Twists and turns of the trial

The jury, which has been in court since January 2, heard closing arguments on Friday. Jurors deliberated for 15 hours and five minutes.

As they took a lunch break after revealing they had reached a verdict Wednesday, some jurors were seen smiling and breathing sighs of relief. One juror returning from lunch wiped her eyes.

A massive crowd swarmed around the Maricopa County Courthouse Wednesday afternoon. Some onlookers said they had been following the trial for months.

The case has drawn worldwide attention and followers lined up daily for courtroom seats.

“We are here every day to support Travis’ family 100%,” said Kathy Brown, who got a cane she uses autographed by prosecutor Juan Martinez and cried outside the courthouse after the verdict was announced Wednesday.

“I am so thankful,” she said. “I knew the Lord would do the right thing.”

Case marked by dramatic arguments

In the trial, both sides dramatically presented their arguments with details about Arias’ love affair with Alexander.

“She rewarded that love from Travis Alexander by sticking a knife in his chest,” Martinez said in his opening statement. “And you know he was a good man, according to her. And with regard to being a good man, well, she slit his throat as a reward for being a good man. And in terms of these blessings, well, she knocked the blessings out of him by putting a bullet in his head.”

But defense attorney Jennifer Willmott countered: “Jodi Arias killed Travis Alexander. There is no question about it. The million-dollar question is what would have forced her to do it?”

Willmott said Arias was the victim of a controlling, psychologically abusive relationship, and Alexander considered Arias “his dirty little secret.”

Martinez accused Arias of playing the victim. He alleged she staged the crime scene to make it look like self-defense.

He also accused her of actively seeking to profit from her media attention.

That’s something Alexander’s family hopes to stop with its civil lawsuit, Beckstead said Wednesday.

“The law in Arizona states that people should not be benefiting from their wrongdoing in a criminal case, and my law firm is going to do the best it can to make sure that she does not benefit from her wrongdoing or her notoriety,” he said.

Arias: “I would much rather die sooner than later”

In her interview with KSAZ Wednesday, Arias said she was surprised by the jury’s verdict.

“It was unexpected, for me, yes, because there was no premeditation on my part,” she said. “I can see how things look that way.”

Arias told KSAZ that longevity runs in her family, and that the worst possible outcome in the case would be a life sentence without parole.

“I would much rather die sooner than later,” she said.

Several members’ of the Arias family were at the jail where Arias was being held Wednesday night, waiting for a chance to meet with her.

Mother Sandra Arias said she had heard about her daughter’s post-verdict TV interview, but hadn’t watched it.

She appeared to be very emotional and concerned about her daughter.

While serving time, Sandra Arias said, her daughter “can do a lot of good for others.”

(Reuters) – An Ohio school bus driver and his two brothers have been arrested after three women who vanished separately as teenagers about a decade ago were found alive at a Cleveland house.

Authorities were alerted to the missing women’s whereabouts on Monday evening by a frantic emergency call from one of them, Amanda Berry, moments after she was freed from the house by a neighbor who said he heard screaming and came to her aid.

“Help me! I’m Amanda Berry. … I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years and I’m here. I’m free now,” Berry, now 26, is heard telling a 911 operator in a recording of the call released by police and posted on the Internet.

Berry had last been seen leaving her job at a fast-food restaurant the day before her 17th birthday in April 2003. The two women found with her were identified by authorities as Gina DeJesus, 23, who vanished in 2004 aged 14 while walking home from school, and Michelle Knight, who was reported to have been 18 or 19 when she went missing in 2002.

A physician at MetroHealth Medical Center, where the three women were taken for evaluation, said all were safe and appeared to be in “fair condition.”

“This isn’t the ending we usually have to these stories,” Dr. Gerald Maloney said. “We’re very happy for them.”

The house is close to where each woman was last seen, and police believe they were in the home for the entire time they were missing. The circumstances of their apparent abductions and captivity remained murky, but officials said further details would be disclosed at a news conference early on Tuesday.

During her 911 call, Berry gave the name of her alleged abductor, said he had left the house and urged police to come quickly before he returned. She indicated that she knew her disappearance had been widely reported in the media.

The neighbor who came to her assistance, Charles Ramsey, said that after he helped Berry force open the door, she emerged from the dwelling “with a little girl,” but authorities said nothing about the presence of any children in the house.

All three women were from the west-side section of Cleveland where they ultimately resurfaced.

There was no word on the fate of a fourth missing girl, Ashley Summers, who disappeared from the same vicinity in July of 2007 aged 14 and who police investigated as possibly linked to the Berry and DeJesus cases, according to the Charley Project website, which documents more than 9,000 missing-persons cases.

MOTHER KEPT SEARCHING

The disappearance of Knight did not attract the local media attention of the suspected abductions of Berry and DeJesus. Her grandmother, Deborah Knight, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper that some family members had concluded, based in part on suggestions by police and social workers at the time, that she had run away.

But her mother Barbara Knight, who now lives in Florida, told the newspaper she never believed her daughter would have vanished without a trace on her own and that she kept searching long after police gave up looking for her.

The suspects, aged 50, 52 and 54, were arrested based on information given to investigators by the three women after their rescue, according to Deputy Cleveland Police Chief Ed Tomba. One of the men was identified as Ariel Castro, 52, who has worked as a bus driver for Cleveland public schools and whose uncle said he owned the house in question.

A mood of jubilation pervaded the city as word spread that the women had been found alive, especially in the blue-collar, heavily Latino neighborhood where dozens of residents clustered near the house from which they were rescued.

A Puerto Rican flag hung from the porch of the modest, two-story dwelling, cordoned off with crime-scene tape. Cheers from the crowd erupted periodically as police cars entered the area.

City Councilwoman Dona Brady, a friend of the Berry family, told Reuters that Berry’s grief-stricken mother had not survived to see her daughter rescued. “She literally died of a broken heart,” Brady said, adding that the mother died aged 47.

A cousin of DeJesus, Sheila Figaro, told CNN that the girl’s mother, Nancy, “never gave up faith knowing that her daughter would one day be found.” “What a phenomenal Mother’s Day gift she gets this Mother’s Day,” she said.

The suspects’ uncle, Caesar Castro, who owns a grocery store on the same street, said Ariel Castro owned the house where the women were found. He expressed shock and said members of his family and the family of DeJesus “grew up together.”

The discovery of the three women was reminiscent of the case of Jaycee Dugard, who was snatched from her northern California home at age 11 by a convicted sex offender, Phillip Garrido, and kept in captivity for 18 years before being rescued in 2009.

During that time she was repeatedly raped by her abductor and gave birth to two girls fathered by him.

(Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Los Angeles; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Christopher Wilson and Pravin Char)

A limousine heading to a bachelorette party burst into flames in the San Francisco area, killing five female passengers, including the bride-to-be, while four other women managed to escape, according to the mother of one of the survivors.

Rosita Guardiano told the San Francisco Chronicle that her daughter — 42-year-old Mary Grace Guardiano of Alameda — is in intensive care, where she’s being treated for smoke inhalation. She also said the woman for whom the bridal shower was being thrown was to be married next month.
The name of the bride-to-be — or of the other four women killed — has not been released by officials.

The limo was carrying nine female passengers and a male driver when it caught fire late Saturday on the San Mateo bridge, California Highway Patrol officer Art Montiel told The Associated Press.
Five occupants became trapped, while four others suffered injuries but managed to get out after the vehicle came to a stop on the bridge, the patrol said. The driver escaped uninjured.
Montiel said that the victims were all in their 30s and were heading from Alameda to Foster City.
KTVU reports that authorities identified the the surviving passengers as Jasmine Desguia, 34, of San Jose; Nelia Arrellano, 36, of Oakland; Amalia Loyola, 48, of San Leandro; and Guardiano.
The blaze occurred around 10 p.m. on westbound lanes of the bridge, which connects San Mateo and Alameda counties, about 20 miles southeast of San Francisco.

The patrol said that smoke started coming out of the rear of the limo, and the driver pulled over as the vehicle quickly became engulfed in flames. Officers were trying to determine the cause of the blaze, which wasn’t the result of an accident.
“We have no idea right now where they were going or where they were coming from,” CHP officer Amelia Jack told KGO-TV.

Two of the women who escaped were taken to Stanford Hospital and the two others were taken to Valley Medical Center in San Jose. All four are being treated for smoke inhalation and burns.
The westbound lanes of the bridge were closed as officers investigated the cause of the deadly fire, but the patrol said one lane of traffic reopened early Sunday.