Toxic smoke from Los Angeles warehouse fire drifts for days

Smoke from a 490,000-square-foot cold-storage warehouse in Boyle Heights kept drifting across downtown Los Angeles and Dodger Stadium for days after the fire erupted at 1400 S. Los Palos Street at about 2:35 p.m. on June 17. The blaze sent hazardous air into nearby neighborhoods and prompted shelter-in-place orders for residents close to the site. By June 20, Mayor Karen Bass had declared a local state of emergency to unlock additional resources.

The building was a large single-story commercial structure covered in solar panels. Contractors were testing the rooftop solar array when the fire started. The warehouse’s storage racks, a collapsed roof and unstable conditions made interior attack too dangerous, pushing firefighters to rely on unusual tactics: helicopter water drops, long-reach excavators, dozers and a structural firefighting robot.

As the fire burned, the smoke plume cut through densely populated parts of the city, including the area around the Port of Los Angeles, downtown and Dodger Stadium. The South Coast Air Quality Management District tracked PM2.5, PM10, ozone, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, while the Environmental Protection Agency and LA County Health HazMat monitored the perimeter.

Air district mobile monitoring near the structure and adjacent neighborhood did not show significant levels of ammonia, hydrogen fluoride or toxic metals such as lead, chromium and arsenic. The district deployed extra PM2.5 monitors at Eastman Avenue Elementary and Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School. Many solar panels had been de-energized and multiple lithium-ion batteries had been removed from the building.

By June 22, smoke conditions had improved and were expected to continue improving, though crews were still opening walls and removing debris to find hidden hot spots.