California officials fear up to 40 deaths in a massive fire that took place Friday night during a rave concert inside a building in Oakland, Washington Post reported.

Nine people have been confirmed dead and 25 others remain missing.

“We did not have a lot of victims go to the hospital,” Sgt. Ray Kelly, spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, told reporters during a news conference Saturday. “It appears that people either made it out, or they didn’t make it out.”

The three-alarm fire was reported at about 11:30 p.m. Friday at a building off 31st Avenue and International Boulevard, about three miles outside of downtown Oakland, according to the Oakland Police Department.

The fire broke out during a party featuring musician Golden Donna’s 100% Silk West Coast Tour. Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach-Reed told The Washington Post that more 50 people were inside the building, a warehouse known as Oakland Ghost Ship, which has been turned into multipurpose venue for artist exhibits and parties.

The fire is not being investigated as a crime, Officer Johnna Watson, spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department, said Saturday.

Questions are still abound about how many exactly have died, what caused the fire, what the building’s history is, whether the party’s attendance exceeded its maximum occupancy and whether there had been any code violations in the past. Arson investigators also will be at the scene of the fire.

“We’re not going to find those answers right now,” Watson told reporters. “We’re very much focused on identifying all those who are still missing.”

The majority of those inside the building are young people, some of whom are from outside the Bay Area, Officer Kelly told reporters. Some are foreigners.

9 killed in overnight fire in US

Washington, Dec 4 (IANS) An overnight fire killed at least 9 people on Saturday while another 25 people were missing in Oakland in United States, media reports said.

The blaze, one of the deadliest structure fires in Oakland history, began at about 11.30 p.m. on Friday during an electronic music party in a two-story warehouse in the San Francisco Bay Area city, Xinhua news agency reported.

The party was reportedly scheduled from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m., and dozens of people were inside at the time of the fire. The roof collapsed as people fled the second floor by a makeshift stairwell leading to the first floor.

While citing the number of casualties as the result of "a preliminary search", Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach-Reed said initially that 13 people were unaccounted for.

"There's still a lot of the building that needs to be searched," she said.

Deloach-Reed noted that there was no sprinkler system in the structure.

Oakland Fire Department posted several messages throughout the night on its Twitter account, saying that fire crews would remain on the scene for several more hours to extinguish hot spots