CA and LA declare a state of emergency as Boyle Heights warehouse fire proves hard to put out

Hours after L.A. Mayor Karen Bass declared a local emergency over the warehouse fire in Boyle Heights, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency, giving the city additional power to mobilize resources.

"California is deploying specialized resources," Newsom said on social media, "supporting local firefighters, and pre-positioning critical supplies to protect communities and accelerate recovery."

The fire first ignited Wednesday at a Boyle Heights cold storage facility operated by Lineage Logistics from what authorities said was a rooftop solar system. On Friday, flare-ups after an anticipated change in wind conditions sent smoke all across northeast L.A. — with smoke visible from afar into Saturday.

" We've got a giant 500,000-square-foot refrigerator, if you wanna call it that, where the surface has been on fire for almost three days now," said LAFD Fire Chief Jaime Moore at a Saturday afternoon press conference.

Moore said that firefighters have managed to contain the fire to half of the building.

But chemicals used for refrigeration and the building's layout 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. "It's very difficult for us to get in there because there's zero visibility inside."

Moore said 85 million pounds of frozen food, including meat that would soon spoil, are inside the facility.

"Our next objective is try to figure out how we're gonna get this product out of there and do it safely under the conditions we have," Moore said.

Firefighters have continued to douse the roof of the building over the weekend. City officials are asking residents who are sensitive to smoke to consider staying indoors.

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

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Jessica Perez

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Boyle Heights Beat

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Will residents need to shelter in place?

City leaders said on Saturday there isn't a need for residents around the fire zone to shelter in place.

The fire broke out Wednesday, prompting an hours-long shelter-in-place order 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, lessening the hazard that the batteries posed.

Early monitoring showed particles were generally present at background levels, AQMD said, but for several seconds at a time, they found increased levels of bromine and chlorine.

“Bromine and chlorine are typically found at trace levels during structural fires and the levels seen were below short-term health-based exposure thresholds,” AQMD said. “Concentrations below this level are not expected to cause adverse health effects. No significant levels of air toxic metals were seen.”