The Brief

The Boyle Heights warehouse fire — and the stench of millions of pounds of rotting food that followed — spoiled summer break for neighborhood kids.

“ Summer's been like a worst nightmare because we couldn't be going outside,” said Noah, a 9-year-old student at Eastman Elementary. It’s one of eight schools serving thousands of students within a mile of the cold storage warehouse that burned in June.

The ongoing clean-up has also added a layer of anxiety and complication for parents at the start of the new school year.

Los Angeles Unified said in a statement Friday that the current plan is for students to return to their home campuses on Aug. 12, the first day of school. The district said staff conducted a “deep, thorough cleaning,” installed new air conditioning filters and air purifiers at affected campuses and that environmental testing is ongoing.

LAUSD superintendent Andrés Chait said in July that Boyle Heights summer school participation dropped after the relocation of four programs in response to the fire. The district declined to provide enrollment and attendance figures for the programs and instead instructed LAist to file a public records request for the information.

Marcela Chagoya is a special education history teacher at  Stevenson College and Career Prep, a middle school within a mile of the fire. She said some of her students relocated to temporary housing or moved in with extended family to escape the stench.

“ I always get excited every single year to see how much [students] grew over the summer,” Chagoya said. “But my concern really this time around is, are all my kiddos gonna come back?”

Some families LAist spoke with said they are ready to send their children back to school.

Ivett Dominguez’s son Diego will start second grade at Eastman next week after a summer spent inside watching TV and playing video games instead of going to baseball practice, swimming and playing at the park.

“I’m confident that it’ll be a good year for them, even if they’re not outside on the playground,” Dominguez said in Spanish.

[“ Confío que a lo mejor va a ser un buen año para ellos aunque no estén afuera del patio.”]

She said she feels like the school is safe, in part because of the new air purifiers.

But others, including Noah’s grandmother Brenda Wenger, said they haven’t decided whether to send children to class on the first day. Wenger said she attended one of the district’s recent webinars about the clean-up, but wants to see the campus for herself.

“ I'm gonna take my Clorox wipeys and I'm gonna look and see if it's been cleaned up or not,” Wenger said.

‘Mom, we’re going to die’

The fire began on June 17.

Dominguez, who lives about five blocks away, said when the air was thick with smoke her son Diego told her, “Ma, we’re going to burn. Ma, we’re going to die. We have to leave.”

[“ Ma, nos vamos a quemar. Ma, nos vamos a morir. Tenemos que irnos.”]

Dominguez said she reassured him that the firefighters would get the blaze under control. The L.A. Fire Department declared the fire "knocked down" a week later on June 24.

Ivette Dominguez and her son Diego live about five blocks from the Lineage warehouse. Dominguez said constantly running an air purifier has contributed to an electric bill that's more than tripled to about $170 per month.

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Mariana Dale/LAist

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The warehouse stored approximately 88 million pounds of food. What didn’t burn decayed in the summer heat and attracted hordes of flies and rodents to the area. Lineage, the company that owns the warehouse, said that as of Monday night, it has removed about 80% of the food waste.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) has received more than 3,900 complaints about rotting meat and other food odors associated with the clean-up since July 12 and has cited the company 22 times for violating public nuisance rules.

Myrna Silva and her two children live one block from the warehouse. She said her daughter, who will soon start middle school, didn’t attend summer school or play in the park after the fire. Even walking their dog, nicknamed Don Goyo, has become challenging.

“As soon as they go out … they come running back in, because of the smell, because of the mosquitoes, because of the flies,” Silva said.

[“ Apenas salen … entran corriendo, porque el aroma, porque los zancudos, porque las moscas.”]

In recent days, the family has experienced stomach pains and diarrhea. Silva said she’s also concerned about how staying inside all summer has impacted her children’s mental health.

“Our kids will go to school frustrated,” Silva said. “They’re going to go into school stressed out. And what worries me is the reaction that all the children are going to have together. Some will adapt. Others won’t.”

[“ Nuestros hijos van frustrados a la escuela. Aan a entrar estresados a la escuela. Y lo preocupante es la reacción que van a tener todos los niños en conjunto. Algunos se van a acoplar. Otros no.”]

Silva said she’s more confident sending her son to Garfield High School because it’s farther from the site of the fire. But she worried about sending her daughter to Stevenson, which is within the 1-mile radius.

“I hope the district makes the best decisions so the kids are OK,” Silva said. “But I’m very worried about how a lot of children are going to react, because they’re under so much stress right now.”

[“Ojalá el distrito tome las mejores decisiones para que los niños estén bien. Pero me preocupa bastante el cómo van a reaccionar muchos niños, porque traen mucho estrés ahorita.”]

How is LAUSD cleaning and testing Boyle Heights schools? 

LAUSD classes start two days before L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’s deadline for Lineage to clean up the remaining food waste.

District leaders said in a July 29 webinar that their goal is for students to return to a school day that is “as normal as possible.” There will be at least two more webinars with information about schools near the warehouse before the first day of classes.

The district also has a family hotline at (213) 443-1300.

“To date, no local, state, or federal agencies have issued specific guidelines or mandates directing the District's response to the Lineage fire,” a district spokesperson wrote in a statement to LAist in response to questions about campus cleaning and testing.

Instead, the district reviewed environmental monitoring data, consulted with UCLA and USC environmental health researchers and reflected on past post-fire practices.

The district’s response to the Lineage fire has included:

• Inspecting and replacing air-conditioning filters with those rated MERV-13, an indicator of the filter’s ability to trap small particles
• Deep cleaning, including by washing walls and furniture, waxing floors and pressure-washing outdoor areas and playground equipment
• Placing air purifiers with carbon charcoal filters in all classrooms

Carlos Torres, who leads the district’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety, said the district monitored air quality during and after the fire and facilitated the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s installation of additional air-monitoring equipment at Eastman Elementary and Stevenson Middle Schools.

“We have enough information to show that our schools are safe,” Torres said. Additional testing is ongoing and results will be posted on the district’s website before school starts, Torres said. The district has said laboratory results from air and surface samples will be published online in early August. Those results had not been posted as of Monday afternoon.

Several people, including members of the teacher’s union and area Board Member Rocío Rivas, have called on the district to also conduct soil testing.

Boyle Heights is one of several East and Southeast L.A. communities with persistently high levels of lead linked to the former Exide battery recycling facility.

A district spokesperson wrote in a statement to LAist that the district has conducted “extensive dust wipe samples.”

“Soil sampling is a more general type of sampling, whereas dust wipe sampling enables us to detect the presence of toxins that may be present following an industrial fire,” the statement read.

It’s unclear whether the dust wipe results are available for public review.

Gilberto Martinez, executive director of region operations, said principals will have the discretion to bring students inside during recess and mealtimes if foul odors arise.

“ I'm feeling kind of scared and nervous because... what if we're not going to be able to play outside,” said Aiden, Noah’s brother and fellow student at Eastman Elementary. “We’re just going to be trapped inside just learning?”

Myrna Silva and her daughter Getzetmany stand in front of InnerCity Struggle, a local nonprofit that's provided resources, including air purifiers, to residents living nearby the warehouse fire site.

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Mariana Dale/LAist

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Jill Johnston, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at UC Irvine, said while unfortunate for students like Aiden, limiting outdoor activity when strong odors are present is the right call.

“There are bad smells, which are a nuisance. But there are also toxic chemicals that are in the air,” said Johnston, who has been working with Boyle Heights community groups to understand the effects of the fire. “Many of these are linked to nausea, to headaches, to adverse respiratory outcomes.”

Johnston said she was pleased to see that nearby schools are equipped with air purifiers that have carbon-based filters, which can remove odor-causing compounds from the air. Johnston said schools need to minimize how much outdoor air is getting inside for the filters to work well.

“The big test is: can kids go into the school and it be a refuge from all the odors that are outside?” Johnston said. “If so, then that's pretty effective.”

Los Angeles County has exotic wild animals roaming about, such as wild parrots and peacocks. But what about camels?

No, we’re not talking about that ancient camel found in the La Brea Tar Pits — these animals were brought over for a U.S. Army experiment.

How camels got into our military

We’re going back to the mid-1800s, before gas-powered automobiles changed the way we travel. The U.S. was on the brink of civil war and in the middle of westward expansion.

Typically, the army relied on mules and horses as beasts of burden, but in the new states and territories, they had a hard time hauling supplies over long distances. That was especially true for the Southwest’s dry deserts and mountains.

Meanwhile, camel brigades (also known as Camel Corps) were already in use in armies around the world. These were made up of camel drivers who ferried supplies, transported troops and conducted military cavalry operations.

Great Britain and India used the animals in the 19th century, according to London’s National Army Museum. The Imperial Camel Corps was also established during World War I, with British, Australian and New Zealand forces in the Middle East.

The Camel Corps caught on in America around the 1850s, according to the Army Historical Foundation. The idea bubbled up to Maj. Henry C. Wayne — a camel fan himself — who recommended their use to a skeptical War Department and Congress.

After some years of political finagling, they gave the experiment $30,000 in funding in 1855 (about $1 million today). The money was used to buy 74 camels from the Mediterranean and put them into military service.

The Los Angeles arrival

They were brought over on the Navy store ship USS Supply and went to Texas first, to Camp Verde. As the camels got used to their new home, the time came for one of their first test missions. The federal government planned to build a wagon road to connect the eastern U.S. to the California/Arizona border.

The Secretary of War at the time required the land surveyor to take 25 of the camels on the expedition in 1857, according to the foundation. These “ships of the desert” ended up thriving where horses and mules couldn’t.

The camels could carry a 700-pound load with ease, traveling up to 40 miles a day. They ate off the land and could go over a week without water. After the camels completed the job, the army sent them to L.A. in 1860.

This was for another test to see if camels could be used for mail delivery. They were essentially racing against mules to see who could get from Camp Fitzgerald (a short-lived Civil War camp in L.A. County) to the Colorado River fastest. What the army didn’t realize was that speed wasn’t the camels’ strong suit — several died from exhaustion.

A historic marker on the L.A. Times' old building in downtown Los Angeles on September 30, 1967. The plaque mentions that the area was used as a "corral for camels from Fort Tejon", which is one of the places the animals were sent to in California.

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Mildred L. Harris

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Los Angeles Public Library/L. Mildred Harris Slide Collection/Los Angeles Photographers Collection

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As the Civil War continued, the camels’ future became uncertain. The army was tired of the experiment and the money it cost. The camels were never officially designated as the U.S.’s “Camel Corps” and thus given no real purpose. In California, they essentially floated around L.A.-area outposts, such as the Los Angeles Quartermaster Depot in downtown, Culver City’s Camp Latham and the Drum Barracks in Wilmington.

The U.S. Army eventually sold the camels in California for about $50 each ($1,000 today) in 1864, according to the foundation. These noble animals, roped into what many called a failed military experiment, ended up as circus attractions and on ranches as pack animals. Some were even let loose.

The last of California’s “Camel Corps” is believed to be Topsy. After the experiment shut down, she was used in the Ringling Brothers Circus and movies.

Topsy was eventually sold off to what’s now the Old Zoo in Griffith Park, according to the Natural History Museum, which found her bones. She died there in 1934 at approximately 80 years old.

A new space celebrating the art of autistic and neurodiverse youths has opened on Abbott Kinney Boulevard in Venice, amid the trendy coffee shops and boutiques.

Called “Limitless,” the space is a project of Help Group, a nonprofit that has served people in Los Angeles with autism and mental health challenges for 85 years.

“What art does is it allows people to have a voice who can’t communicate typically. It gives you an insight into who they are as a being,” Susan Berman, CEO of Help Group, told LAist.

Berman said the prime Abbott Kinney real estate was a gift from a board member. Help Group is using the square footage for a community space and gallery to feature neurodivergent artists.

Among the artists included is Noah Remis, 15, whose piece “I <3 NY” incorporates watercolor over the titles of famous musicals like Hamilton and Sweeney Todd.

“Those are different musicals that I know and love,” Remis said.

“Some I saw on Broadway. Just so you know, I also put Cats on there just to anger my dad,” he joked. He said his dream is to act on Broadway.

Noah’s dad, Rich Remis, might not be a fan of Cats, but he is a fan of seeing his son’s love of theater expressed in his painting.

“To hang it up in a gallery with everyone else’s work, it just really adds a special weight to it that I think is certainly not lost on Noah,” he said.

Noah, in response, added: “Don’t get emotional.”

Noah said he hopes other kids will be inspired by his work and maybe even take it home.

Berman, who’s been with Help Group for more than four decades, said she has big plans for the space, which opened last week.

“Our plan is for the community to see the gifts that our neurodiverse artists have, not only in their art but as human beings,” Berman said.

Tanaka Day, an epic meet-and-greet of people with the Japanese surname, is happening the weekend of Sept. 19 and 20 at — wait for it — Tanaka Farms in Irvine.

"I'm the idea guy around here," said proprietor Glenn Tanaka — aka Farmer Tanaka — who dreamed up the inaugural event. "Some of them [were] pretty good, some turned out OK."

For this one, 400 people from across the country RSVP’d, bonded by a Japanese surname that is one of the most common in the U.S. — and one that speaks to the history of Japanese immigration that first brought laborers here starting in the late 1800s.

Glenn Tanaka runs the family Tanaka Farms in Irvine.

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Courtesy Tanaka Farms

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One of them was Glenn's grandfather, Takeo Tanaka, who put down farming roots in California that span four generations and counting — Glenn's father George Tanaka, Glenn himself, and Glenn's son Kenny, whose three children are a regular presence at the farm.

"Tanaka literally means middle of the rice field," he said — farmers, essentially. And because many early immigrants were from farming villages, he added, "a lot of Tanakas came over."

The 69-year-old figured, why not bring as many of them together as possible — to hang out, tell family stories and help fill in the tapestry of the Japanese American immigration experience united by the surname.

One example is how the incarceration of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II had touched those who worked and owned farms — and ended up having to sell their holdings on the cheap.

Already, stories are flooding in. Tanaka said different siblings from one Tanaka family had sent in their experiences.

One brother read them and wound up learning new things about the family.

"What's really good to know is I've helped create families that talk," Tanaka said. "Because now they're asking, 'What did, you know, great-grandmother do?'"

That ocean breeze is just not cutting it in schools in Torrance and Long Beach as Southern California reels from a heat wave.

Parents have taken to social media, created petitions and are proposing a bond measure in order to address the sweltering classrooms as temperatures hit triple digits in some areas.

Only 25% of Torrance Unified classrooms have air conditioning, according to a district spokesperson. And while 90% of Long Beach Unified schools have air conditioning, the schools without air conditioning have to bear this heat spell until the end of 2027 when new air conditioning will be in all classrooms.

What are schools doing to beat the heat?

In Long Beach, the district says there are portable fans in classrooms without AC and the district has installed heat-blocking window covers.

"The things that we do immediately and have been doing for several years, hydration stations,” Keith Butler, the deputy superintendent at TUSD, told the school board early this week. “So our nutrition services freezes blocks of ice, puts them into containers with water, and students are — and staff are able to rotate through and at least get ice water.”

There is also a classroom rotation system so everyone gets a turn in cooling zones, he said.

Can schools close on extreme heat days?

Eric Mitchell, a spokesperson for LBUSD, told LAist, “The District will not close schools because of extreme weather unless the City of Long Beach Public Health Department or a state-authorized emergency response agency directs it.”

Baillie echoed his words adding that a state-declared emergency allows schools to close temporarily without needing to make up teaching time. School funding is dependent on attendance and instructional time.

If a local emergency is declared, school districts, she said, must consult with labor unions to adjust the school schedule to either extend the school year or move to a student-free professional development day.

“Our district is actively discussing creating union-approved ‘weather days’ that would provide a mechanism to adjust the schedule,” Baillie said. “Thresholds would be part of that discussion and might focus on when national weather alerts elevate a heat advisory to an extreme heat event, as they did this week.”

So how can Torrance get ACs in the classroom?

School districts like Torrance pay for facility upgrades like new ACs through district issued bond measures. A school district takes a loan and the people in that city pay back that loan through an increase in their property taxes. That is because there is no specific state allocation of funding for major upgrades or construction. Most of the money schools get from the state is spent on instruction and other student services. There have been some occasional grant programs, like CalShape, but no ongoing source of funding.

This week, a petition to get TUSD to place a bond measure on the ballot to fund ACs has already garnered over 1500 signatures.

But, Baillie said, “Third-party polling completed earlier this year showed a willingness to vote for additional future bonds; however, when specifically asked about the costs of specific bonds to fund the $520 million needed to upgrade the electrical systems and install AC at all 34 campuses, polling showed there would not be enough support (bonds require 55% +1 of voters in an election) to pass a bond for AC.”

And so the bond measure was not placed on the upcoming ballot.

Butler, the deputy superintendent, explained during this week’s school board meeting that parents cannot simply donate an AC unit.

“ One [reason] is it's not super effective to have a typical window unit from a home that would be trying to cool a 960 sq. ft. classroom with 27 students and a teacher, maybe an instructional aide,” he said. “But the bigger issue is the ones that are large enough to really do that, the room has to have a large electrical load, and our electrical system within our buildings where most of them were built in the 1960s, it's just not meant to handle what it does.”

LAist reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this article.