Officials investigated at least 10 code enforcement complaints at the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland, where 36 people were killed after a massive fire broke out last December, but they did not take any action, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The Oakland fire department has come under tremendous scrutiny for what many consider negligence in the inspection of the property, despite complaints about safety conditions. Artists were living in the warehouse and an illegal concert was held inside the night of the fire, the deadliest in the city's history, with about 50 to 100 people in attendance.
"If you were not familiar with the building and the way that it was, if you were going there for a party, you wouldn't be aware of the maze that you have to go through to get out," Danielle Boudreaux, a former friend of the couple who ran the warehouse, told the AP in December.
An illegal rave was reported at the property March 1, 2015, but the police officer who investigated said he did not cite anyone and left the scene. Since 1999, there were 23 code enforcement inspections and 16 visits by the fire department to the warehouse. There were also nearly 100 calls to police from the property, records show.
Tenants with businesses close by had reported blocked fire exits and numerous electrical outages and short circuits, the Times reported.
"I strongly believe that sunshine helps to light the path forward," Mayor Libby Schaaf said in a statement with the release of the documents. "I recognize the media and others have been frustrated by the time it has taken to assemble these documents from many different departments, because we were determined to cast a wide net to provide all relevant information and take an exhaustive look at not just the warehouse, but also the immediately adjacent properties. Transparency is critical. Our impacted community deserves to know all the facts about this tragedy."
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