As health concerns build, firefighters hope to extinguish Boyle Heights warehouse fire by this week

Six days into the Boyle Heights warehouse fire that has blanketed the region in acrid smoke, city officials are urging for patience as firefighters continue to extinguish a fire that's proven tough to put out.

LAFD Fire Chief Jaime Moore said in a Monday news conference his best hope is for a knock-down sometime this week.

  "I anticipate, and I'm hoping, that by middle of this week, we will have this fire fully extinguished," he said. "I know it's very ambitious considering what's happened in the past, but that's what my goal is."

He said progress has been steadily made, but the task at hand is extraordinary.

" I can tell you that fire activity has continued to decrease throughout the day," he said. "This has not been a conventional firefighting operation from the onset."

Over the weekend, firefighters removed walls to parts of the burning building, allowing water to reach previously inaccessible burning areas. Fire crews from across the region, Moore said, have joined in on the effort.

Moore said firefighters have held the blaze to half of the 500,000-square-foot building, but chemicals used for refrigeration and foam installed inside the walls for cold storage have made fighting this fire a unique challenge.

"We have corrugated steel on the outside walls filled with very, very dense foam, and the interior walls are also protected by corrugated steel walls as well," he said.

The smoke from a fire that appeared to have reignited in Boyle Heights.

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Jessica Perez

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The LA Local

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What's more, the warehouse is stocked with 85 million pounds of products, including once frozen meat.

" We have systematically dismantled the building by tearing down the sides and had access to these 65-foot-tall, 600-foot-long metal racks that have cartons on pallets of product throughout that's burning away," Moore said. "That's what you see in the smoke."

Parks, pools and schools have been closed over air quality concerns.

The fire was first ignited Wednesday from what authorities said was a solar system atop the cold-storage facility leased and operated by Lineage.

A thick cloud of smoke descends over a street near a cold storage warehouse after a reported flare-up.

(

Jessica Perez

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Boyle Heights Beat

)

Flare-ups over the weekend sent smoke all across northeast L.A. — with smoke visible from afar.

On Wednesday, the fire prompted an hourslong shelter-in-place order on due to hazardous materials, including ammonia.

Since then, fire authorities said, the building operator was able to pull ammonia out of the facility’s tanks and transport the chemical off-site. The operator also filled a generator, allowing the building’s interior sprinkler system to keep running.

Fire authorities stressed the aggressive tactics that firefighters were using. Helicopter water drops — almost unheard of for a structure fire — continued throughout the weekend. Firefighters were also able to retrieve a number of forklifts with lithium-ion batteries from inside the building, reducing the hazard the batteries posed.