OAKLAND — The warehouse that housed the Ghost Ship art collective was not listed as it should have been in a city database of commercial buildings that require yearly fire safety inspections — and no records exist of any inspections of the structure, according to a city employee familiar with the database and inspection records.

If fire inspectors had been inside the building where 36 people died in a blaze last Friday, they would have seen what visitors and former residents called a death trap and a tinder box: piles of wood, shingles and old furniture, extension cords and often-sparking electrical wires running willy-nilly throughout the structure, welding equipment and propane tanks scattered about — the kind of fire code violations that could have led inspectors to shutter the building immediately.

“They never inspected it. It’s not on the inspection rolls,” said the city employee, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to news organizations about the fire.

Ironically, the Ghost Ship was just yards from a city fire station.

Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed and Fire Marshal Miguel Trujillo did not respond to emails Thursday requesting comment.

The Oakland City Council is now talking about strengthening the city’s inspection regimen. A council committee on Thursday asked the City Administrator’s Office to present a report at a February meeting on ways to prevent resident displacement while addressing business safety and examine staffing needs for the code enforcement and fire inspectors. Later Thursday, the full council approved a proclamation to declare a state of emergency, making the city eligible for reimbursements from the state of up to 75 percent of the labor and other fire-related costs.

The Bay Area News Group has asked repeatedly since Monday for public records documenting fire safety inspections for the Ghost Ship building. City officials have responded each time by saying that records are being searched for and compiled. A lawyer for the news organization complained in a letter to City Administrator Sabrina Landreth Monday that the compiling of records should not block the public’s right of access to them.

But for the fourth straight day, the city went into lockdown mode over Fire Department documents that could show when fire inspectors were last at the warehouse. Mayor Libby Schaaf’s administration has sent at least two emails throughout City Hall and even to City Council members telling them not to discuss the Ghost Ship with the public or release records about it.

The spokeswoman, Karen Boyd, also declined to discuss the inspection database, a computer system called One Stop, where inspection results are entered.

At a Wednesday news conference, Schaaf said she did not know when fire inspectors were last in the warehouse.

Schaaf said she would not “scapegoat city employees” in the wake of the tragedy, the nation’s worst fire in terms of fatalities in 13 years.

It was not immediately clear why the building, legally permitted only as a warehouse, was not in the database, or how many other commercial structures in the city may also be missing from it. An Alameda County civil grand jury report in 2014 estimated that as many as 4,000 of Oakland’s roughly 11,000 commercial buildings aren’t inspected as required in a given year.

Bruce Nielsen, a retired Oakland fire battalion chief, said he thinks missing buildings on inspection rounds “happens all the time. The expectation that every single building in the city gets inspected every year from a practical standpoint is unrealistic.”

However, one business owner near the warehouse said city fire inspectors show up regularly to his building.

“They come in and inspect — if a box is too close to a ceiling, an extension cord, you have 24 hours to fix it,” said Al Garcia, of Reed Supply, an appliance store on Fruitvale Avenue. “Sometimes they do a follow-up, sometimes they don’t.”

At least one firefighter had tried to get inspectors’ attention focused on the Ghost Ship, the Bay Area News Group has learned.

It happened when an engine company doused a sofa burning outside the Ghost Ship early one morning in September 2014. After the collective’s leader, Derick Almena, came out to see what was going on, a firefighter was able to briefly enter the building, according to another Fire Department employee who requested anonymity.

The firefighter then reported to fire inspectors that there appeared to be fire hazards in the building, the Fire Department employee said, but the firefighter never heard back from safety inspectors.

The Fire Prevention Bureau’s safety inspectors are not firefighters. It is their job to inspect commercial buildings yearly for violations of Oakland’s fire code for hazards such as exposed electrical wires, blocked stairways and exits that are not marked.

Code enforcement inspectors, who work for the building department and whose job is to respond to complaints or violations of permits, have been to the Ghost Ship, records show, but apparently took no initiative to look around.

An October 2014 complaint of “construction house/structure without permits” at the Ghost Ship, an unnamed inspector rolled up but left after seeing no new house being built, Darin Ranelletti, interim director of planning and building, said Wednesday.

It was unclear if the anonymous person making the complaint meant the structure was inside the building, which had small cottage-like structures where artists lived. But the inspector didn’t attempt to get inside to check and later reported in writing that “structure was removed before inspection.”

A complaint in November stated that the “main building was remodel (sic) for residential,” which would be illegal. But, again, the inspector didn’t get inside the building.

The city “messed up big time — and there were lives that paid for that mistake,” said Osby James Robles, of Hercules, who lost his close friend Chelsea Faith Dolan in the fire.

“It irks the hell out of me,” Robles said. “What happened last Friday did not have to happen.”

Staff writers Julia Prodis Sulek, Matthias Gafni and Marisa Kendall contributed to this report.