While the fire at the Lineage warehouse in Boyle Heights was declared knocked down last week, fire officials are staying in the area because the fire is still smoldering deep inside the building.
“We do have that private fire company on scene, and that's contracted by the business owner, and they are using that water cannon, which is the only appliance that can get the reach to actually get water on that smoldering debris in the center of the building,” Capt. Branden Silverman with L.A. Fire told KNX News’ Jon Baird.
Due to the smoldering, officials have been unable to give the building back to Lineage.
Cleanup efforts are still underway as trucks rolled in to help haul away the 85 million of pounds of spoiled frozen food. Now residents in the area, who have had to deal with intense smoke, are dealing with the smell of rotting food.
“The fire may be knocked down, but this crisis is not over for the families, workers, students, and small businesses living with the odor, pests, truck traffic, and uncertainty left behind,” Councilmember Isabel Jurado said in a statement. “As 85 million pounds of spoiled food are removed from this site, my priority is making sure the cleanup is safe, transparent, and accountable to the people of Boyle Heights — not just to the agencies or the company responsible for this property. Residents deserve clear testing results, strong public health protections, real resources, and a recovery process shaped by the community most impacted."
But Yoshira Ornelas Van Horne, an assistant professor of Environmental Sciences at UCLA, said there’s also some concern that while firefighters were dumping all of that water on the flames, some of it may have picked up contaminants as the water flowed into storm drains and then into the LA River.
“So right now we're focusing on heavy metals, so things [like] arsenic, lead, and cadmium,” she told Baird. “That's really all we have currently funding and capacity for, but…there could be other chemicals of concern that we're just not at capacity to test for right now.”
The warehouse fire started on June 17 at the Lineage cold storage facility on South Los Palos St. and reignited once again on June 19.
The exact cause of the fire is still unknown.
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