Massive Boyle Heights warehouse fire keeps smoke spreading across Los Angeles

Smoke from the Boyle Heights warehouse fire was expected to linger for three more days, keeping advisories in place across Los Angeles. Crews fought a nearly 500,000-square-foot cold-storage blaze, and the smell of smoke reached most of the city.

That prolonged plume has already outlasted the initial shelter-in-place order, which was lifted for at least part of the area on Friday, June 19, even as smoke advisories stayed in effect. Los Angeles Fire Department officials opened smoke relief locations at Pecan Recreation Center, 145 South Pecan Street, and City Terrace Park, 1126 N Hazard Ave., as the fire’s impact spread far beyond the 1400 block of South Los Palos Street. No injuries were reported, but city and county officials moved on Saturday, June 20, with Mayor Karen Bass declaring a local emergency and Gov. Gavin Newsom declaring a state of emergency for Los Angeles County.

The fire began shortly before 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 17, at the Lineage Logistics cold-storage facility in Boyle Heights. Lineage said it believed the blaze started while contractors were testing a third-party owner’s rooftop solar array. Crews later found additional fire inside a freezer area, underscoring how the incident spread beyond the roof area that first drew attention.

Firefighters have been forced to work around wall instability, structural concerns and hazardous-materials issues inside the building, limiting interior attacks on the blaze. Instead, the department has relied on large amounts of water, helicopter drops and a structural firefighting robot to push back flames from the outside. In an update Saturday night, the Los Angeles Fire Department said aerial suppression operations had ended for the evening, ground crews would remain on scene overnight, and the fire remained a "complex, long-duration incident."

Officials said smoke conditions would keep changing as weather and suppression efforts changed, and flare-ups were expected. On Sunday, Fire Department Chief Jaime Moore said "incredible headway" had been made, but the fire was still expected to smolder for several more days. The cause remained unknown, and the unanswered questions now matter as much as the smoke: what exactly was being tested on the rooftop, and why a single warehouse fire has proved so difficult to contain in a dense part of Los Angeles.