BAY AREA QUAKE : Broken Bodies, Cars Pulled From Under Concrete : Rescue: Loved ones hold onto slim hopes as they watch attempts to find survivors at the site of the Nimitz Freeway collapse in Oakland.

As rescuers ever so slowly untangled the dead from the wreckage of an Oakland freeway Thursday, clusters of loved ones of the missing gazed up at the ruins with agony in their eyes.

“I have hope as long as there are people still working, as long as we know there are air pockets up there, I have hope,” said Daniel Rubi, whose 28-year-old son was believed to have been on the Nimitz Freeway when part of it collapsed in Tuesday’s earthquake. Rubi’s son, a father of 8-year-old twin boys, had not been heard from since the earthquake struck.

Like other distraught family members and friends of the missing, Rubi was bitter that more was not being done. “When we try to get close,” he said, “the police just say, ‘Step back or you will be arrested.’ ”

The scene Rubi and others so sadly surveyed offered them only more pain. At dawn, as a crane lifted out what once had been an Acura automobile, only the steering wheel and a human arm could be discerned in the twisted metal. Many vehicles had been flattened to a height of only seven inches. Everywhere, there were pools of blood and by day’s end, the air was filled with the stench of death.

“It’s unbelievable how (the vehicles) are crushed,” said one Oakland policeman. “It looks like somebody took some tinfoil, just wadded it up and threw it away.”

A crew of 200 workers were combing through the rubble Thursday, searching without success for survivors and extricating vehicles and bodies. By day’s end, officials said a total of 18 bodies and 45 vehicles had been recovered. Most of the victims in those vehicles were believed to have been rescued Tuesday night. Twenty-seven vehicles remained trapped between the two decks of the elevated section that had toppled. Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson said 83 motorists were believed missing, fewer than initially believed.

Oakland Asst. Fire Chief Andy Stark said 35 of 44 freeway sections involved in the collapse had been repeatedly examined for survivors by workers with sophisticated detection equipment and by specially trained dogs. The remaining nine sections were “pancaked” or so badly mangled that rescuers could not get to them.

“We’re always hoping for miracles, but I am not confident we are going to find anyone else alive,” Stark said.

Dan Getreu, a rescuer from the Milpitas Fire Department, said workers used “jaws of life” to cut off the tops of vehicles and then lifted out the bodies with their hands. It took as long as four hours to remove each victim. Getreu removed the bodies of a woman and a little girl from one of the vehicles. The little girl, he said, appeared to have been reading a book when the quake struck. “It’s not difficult except for the emotional part,” he said.

The day brought relief for some. Some who had not been heard from since the earthquake struck and were believed to have been killed on the freeway suddenly appeared. Among them was an Oakland attorney who had been missing for a day and a half. He showed up at his City Hall office Thursday, informing co-workers he had been sick with the flu. “One by one people are turning up,” said Mayor Wilson.

Workers with heavy equipment tore at tons of concrete and metal girders on the freeway’s upper deck, trying to crumble it into small pieces so it could be carted away and the vehicles below removed. The 90-foot freeway sections weighed 10,000 tons each and could not be dismantled in slabs. Workers concentrated first on areas where the cars would be easiest to reach, leaving the sections that had completely pancaked to the last. Cranes seven to eight stories high lifted off the cars, some still containing bodies. Rescuers said a rank odor permeated the rubble.

As on Wednesday, the work proceeded slowly because officials feared too much equipment or movement might send the wobbly freeway section crashing to the ground. The section had sagged overnight, and pockets between the two decks that had been four feet high the day before were only inches apart on Thursday. A series of aftershocks might have contributed to the settling, but officials said they caused nothing to topple from the rubble. Gasoline and oil leaking from the vehicles posed fire hazards.

“It’s very dangerous under there,” said Oakland Police Sgt. Bob Crawford. “They believe it could collapse at any moment.”

A team of medical examiners, wearing bright blue overalls and face masks, was assigned to each car that was removed to identify the victims. They searched through purses and wallets for clues. The bodies were then put in blue body bags and wheeled away on stretchers to be taken by ambulance to the morgue. Police publicized numbers for people to call for information on their missing loved ones.

Ted Landswick and Bob Pratt, two Alameda County prosecutors, stared at the mangled freeway as though they were looking for someone. They were. A friend was believed trapped inside. “It’s all a matter of timing (who got killed), and in this case, it’s a matter of bad timing,” said Pratt. The prosecutors feared that a colleague who had left the office to pick up her niece at 5 p.m. on Tuesday may have been on the freeway when it collapsed. No one had heard from her since.

After waiting all day with no word of his son, Daniel Rubi confronted Mayor Wilson at a news conference at the scene. “Mayor, did you know you are directly responsible for this tragedy?” Rubi challenged. Police, recognizing Rubi was not a member of the media, took him away in a police car. A family member explained Rubi was overcome by grief, and police said they expected to release him.

Sheila Smith also waited. Three friends had been missing since they left the East Bay for Tuesday’s World Series game. “We will stay as long as it takes until they make us leave,” said Smith, who had tried unsuccessfully to get through police lines.

The wreckage drew more than just families and friends to the industrial neighborhood. People with cameras and video recorders came to take pictures and tape the carnage. Some watched from nearby rooftops. Members of the Revolutionary Communist Party exhorted the 100 spectators to demand to be allowed to help and they attacked the government for doing too little. Spectators applauded the protesters.

And just as grief drew some, others came for different reasons. Dwight Jones, an auto-detailer who lives in nearby San Leandro, was a fortune seeker. He said he heard two armored cars had been crushed in the debris and he hoped he would find money when the winds kicked up. “I wish the wind would start blowing this way,” he said.

Entrepreneurs set up hot dog stands and passed out coupons for restaurants and Halloween costume stores. Rescuers took naps on cots alongside the freeway, using their hard hats to shade their eyes from the bright, warm sun.

Jason Solorio, a rescue worker from the Army Reserve, said in the morning he and other rescuers were upset that they could not move more quickly. He said they saw several victims who didn’t look badly injured. Although no one saw any movement or heard voices, rescuers, like the loved ones watching, had clung to the hope that someone might still be alive.

From a distance of 25 feet, Solorio saw a couple sitting in the front seat of a Honda Prelude. Their eyes were closed. The front end of the car was crushed, and its windshield had shattered and caved in, but the top of the car remained intact. Solorio said he had wondered if they just might be unconscious.

Steel girders were used to reinforce the precarious section, and some officials said the excavation was moving more rapidly than it had the first day. But Kyle Nelson, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation, conceded: “It’s very slow work. It’s one section at a time. I’ve never seen damage this massive.”