Did authorities miss opportunities to prevent tragic fire?

(AP) — City and state officials fielded years of complaints about dangerous conditions, drugs, neglected children, trash, thefts and squabbles at the illegally converted warehouse where 36 partygoers were killed in a weekend fire, with inspectors knocking on the door as recently as two weeks before the blaze.

With all the attention from police, child welfare authorities, building inspectors and others, some of those who saw what was going on at the underground artists' colony say they figured time and again that authorities would shut it all down.

Record searches and interviews by The Associated Press indicate that the couple who leased the warehouse and turned it into rented living spaces and artists' studios, Derick Ion Almena and Micah Allison, were already under scrutiny by several agencies.

Some of those agencies had been told or could have seen for themselves that the family of five and their dozens of artist tenants were living in a warehouse that had no permit to operate as a living space and allegedly had no proper kitchen, electricity, adequate fire exits or solid stairs.

Child welfare workers had taken away the couple's three children in mid-2015 but returned them by this past summer, despite the illegal conditions at the warehouse and the children being hungry, infested with lice and frequently truant, Micah Allison's father and other acquaintances said.

Most recently, Oakland city inspectors received complaints on Nov. 13 about the warehouse being remodeled into residences and on Nov. 14 about an "illegal interior building structure," city records showed Tuesday.

Under the Oakland city code, building officials and fire marshals need court permission to enter commercial lodgings if the owner or manager refuses access.