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The latest Sunday update on the number of victims and details about the investigation is here. Follow our ongoing coverage of the Ghost Ship live-work warehouse fire tragedy on this page, where the most recent stories are on top followed by earlier coverage.

OAKLAND — Just three weeks before Friday’s deadly fire, city building inspectors had launched an investigation into “illegal structures” built inside the converted warehouse dubbed the “Ghost Ship,” but officials conceded Saturday they had been unable to gain access during an inspection visit and it appears they did not follow up.

The revelation sickened family members and survivors of the nine confirmed victims and dozens of others feared dead amid the charred remains occupied by the art collective, which was not permitted for the living area, underground dance club and artists’ studios that firefighters found late Friday night. The quirky, cluttered, wood-filled space — with no smoke alarms or sprinklers — seems to have trapped its inhabitants and visitors inside.

Officials had cited the building’s owner for blight on Nov. 13 after neighbors complained of “a ton of garbage piling up” in the adjoining lot. They next day, city records show officials began an investigation of an alleged “illegal interior building structure.”

When inspectors returned on Nov. 17, they couldn’t get in, Darin Ranelletti, Oakland’s interim director of planning and building, said at a news conference. He didn’t say why or explain whether they had tried later to return.

But City Council member Noel Gallo told the Bay Area News Group on Saturday that nobody had answered the door when inspectors visited the building, and they apparently had not tried again.

Family members waiting for word about loved ones were furious when Mayor Libby Schaaf told them that the city had tried to inspect the warehouse last month but couldn’t get access.

“What I don’t understand is why weren’t they able to gain access, and if that was the case, why didn’t they stay there until they could?” said Dan Vega, an Oakley mechanic whose 22-year-old brother Alex Vega is still missing. “They should have locked it up.

“I don’t think it’s fair that my brother had to lose his life because the city didn’t know what to do.”

Gallo said what was going on at the warehouse was an open secret and that the city had ample chances to shut it down before the fire. He’s been complaining about the warehouse for years, he said, but inspectors were slow to react.

“We need to get our act together,” he said of the city. “It’s unfortunate that it takes a tragedy like this for us to realize that we have to do something.”

He said there are similar industrial buildings with people living in them in the neighborhood.

An art collective called “Ghost Ship” was occupying the building in the 1300 block of 31st Ave., which property records show is owned by Chor N. Ng of Oakland. The two-story building is zoned for a warehouse, but it had been converted into an unpermitted living space — a recurring problem in the Bay Area’s white-hot housing market.

The building had no sprinklers or fire alarms, a few fire extinguishers and only two known exits, officials said Saturday. The roof of the building collapsed, trapping dozens in a horrific inferno during a rave when the blaze raged into a three-alarm fire about 11:30 p.m. Friday. At least nine people were confirmed dead as of Saturday with more than 25 people unaccounted for.

Oakland fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed said firefighters had trouble battling the blaze because the space “was filled end-to-end with furniture, what-not, collections … it was like a maze almost.”

Photographs on social media show what was a mezzanine that ran more than half of the building’s length, a finished space with a large rug, lamps, couches, a piano, speakers and art work.

City building inspectors wrote in online records Saturday that “some of the victims might have been trapped in the blaze when they couldn’t escape down a makeshift, one-way stairwell leading to the second floor that was built out of wooden pallets.”

Matt Hummel, who occasionally visited the warehouse, called the way up to the mezzanine “a pirate ship claptrap” that was “a really scary way to get up and down. It was like climbing a fort.”

There was a little-known staircase behind an area of the mezzanine used as a musical stage, said Hummel, 46. It was unknown Saturday if anyone tried to escape the fire using those stairs.

Hummel said the place had “an opium den bordello vibe” and that the first floor was full of improvised wooden structures where people lived.

Shelley Mack said she lived in the warehouse for five months at the end of 2014 and witnessed generator fires and artists using butane torches. Showers upstairs were heated with propane, she said.

A man who said he lived in the warehouse for a few months said it was strewn with electrical wires that sometimes sparked. The interior often smelled like burning wires and wood. There were numerous wooden living spaces, and even camping trailers inside.

“The whole place was wires and cables and wood, said DeL Lee, 34.

The person who he said rented the warehouse, Derick Alemany, “had a fetish for wood.” The place was filled with wood signs and shingles, he said.

City inspectors went to the property in mid-November after a neighbor complained about “a ton of garbage piling up” in a vacant lot next to the building, calling it a “trash collection site” and a “trash recycling site.” The building had been “remodeled for residential,” the complaint states.

An inspection of that complaint prompted another investigation about the illegal structure inside, records show. Ranelletti said the warehouse was not permitted for residents.

Ng, according to property records, bought the warehouse in 1997. She could not be reached Saturday afternoon.

Ng went to court in late 2005 to evict a person from the building, Alameda County Superior Court records show. The tenant was paying $500 a month. There is no indication in the record how the property was being used.

Records show Ng owns 11 other Oakland properties, including an art gallery and retail building on International Boulevard, and at least two in San Francisco. A tenant at one of the Oakland properties would only describe her as a nice woman.

She also owns a business called Kingmaker Marketing and Consulting.

Jonah Strauss, who survived a fire at an artists’ collective on 24th Street last year, said sometimes artists have little choice but to live in places like the warehouse.

“Artists have gone from living in fairly safe conditions to being edged into sketchier and sketchier conditions because that’s what we can afford,” Strauss said. “We’re all feeling the crunch.”

Staff writers Mathias Gafni, Tracy Seipel and Julia Prodis Sulek contributed to this story.