The fire engines and towering cranes that surrounded the smoking ruins of Lineage Inc. in Los Angeles are gone. “Road Closed” signs barricade a few streets around the massive cold storage warehouse where fire broke out on June 17 and burned for eight days.
But for the working-class residents living in the shadow of the nearly 500,000-square-foot facility, the absence of black smoke that hovered over the area, which includes much of Boyle Heights and parts of East Los Angeles, doesn’t mean the emergency is over.
That was evident about a mile away from the warehouse on July 9, when more than 450 people gathered at Stevenson Middle School for what was supposed to be a community meeting with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis, and Lineage COO Jeff Rivera on debris cleanup and recovery resources for residents.
But loud interruptions from several audience members prevented much dialogue, with chants of “Lineage Out!” and “Shut it down!” drowning out reports from the South Coast Air Quality Management District as well as Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
Mary Lou Hernandez, 64, asked the crowd to work with community leaders and agencies.
“All the shouting and screaming is not going to solve anything,” she said, criticizing vociferous voices as people who “didn’t come here for answers.”
This second meeting between city and county officials, which included an apology from Rivera for the disruption the fire has caused, did get some information across, such as additional support from Lineage on relocating residents for 45 days, the deadline Bass set for cleanup, vouchers to Food4Less, and money for utility bills.
Neighbors remain frustrated at policymakers and emergency officials they said need to better communicate with them in English and Spanish.
Jorge Leon Lopez, 64, helped carry a cloth sign accusing the cold storage facility of criminal negligence. He said he couldn’t hear any responses from the panel because he was in an overflow room.
“What we know is they don’t give answers,” said Lopez, who lives on Calzona Street, about 2,000 feet away from the blaze. “Since the fires, I have headaches and am dizzy. It is like living in a dump.”
The disaster further burdens a working-class community already weighed down by environmental and public health inequities, according to a UCLA brief, the second in a series examining the impacts of the Lineage fire.
The report, released on June 30 by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute and the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, examined demographic, socioeconomic, housing, health, and environmental conditions in the smoke advisory area identified after the fire.
“Emergency response cannot stop at containment,” said study co-author Arturo Vargas Bustamante, faculty research director at the institute. “Residents in the smoke advisory area were already facing higher baseline health risks and lower access to care before the fire.
“Lawmakers and emergency officials need to prioritize access to health care, smoke relief resources, and long-term monitoring of air quality and health impacts so that recovery reaches the people most likely to experience lasting harm.”
Researchers said the smoke advisory zone has a cumulative environmental and socioeconomic burden 1.6 times higher than Los Angeles County overall, diesel pollution levels three times the county average, and higher asthma- and cardiovascular disease-related emergency department visit rates than the county.
The analysis also found that many residents may face barriers to protecting themselves from lingering smoke, since the poverty rate in the area is 1.5 times higher than the county rate, and the uninsured rate is twice the county rate.
Renters occupy 71% of housing units, with nearly 4 in 10 of these structures built before 1940, and close to 10,000 households, about 1 in 3, without air conditioning.
“Public health guidance has to be matched with real resources,” said co-author Silvia González, the institute’s research director. “Telling residents to stay indoors and close their windows is not enough when many households lack air conditioning, live in older homes, or cannot afford to miss work or pay for care. An equitable response should include income support, small business assistance, clean-air spaces, and direct support for households trying to stay safe while smoke and air quality concerns continue.”
“The doctor tells me I am fine, but I don’t feel fine,” said Rosa González, 60, who lives around the corner from the warehouse. She arrived at the free AltaMed mobile clinic parked at Lou Costello Jr. Recreation Center in Los Angeles on July 8, pointing to swollen eyelids. Through an interpreter, she complained of irritated and watery eyes that are sensitive to bright sun.
“Even if the smoke is gone, I feel worse,” González said. “My bronchitis is flaring up, and I have a new, dry cough.”
AltaMed Health Services provided free medical consultations for residents affected by the Lineage fire, including respiratory screenings, oxygen level checks, asthma assessments, blood pressure screenings, mental health support and referrals for ongoing care.
“What we know is they don’t give answers. Since the fires, I have headaches and am dizzy. It is like living in a dump.” — Jorge Leon Lopez, 64
Physician’s assistant Carolina Trigo said the patients she’s seen complained mostly about upper respiratory problems.
“No exposure is too low and because everybody’s different and we respond to allergens differently, we have different co-morbidities, reactions are going to be person-dependent,” Trigo said.
Lourdes Olivares, chief operating officer of Via Care, another federally-qualified health center, reported Wednesday that its staff continues to provide the same services at its clinics, at resource centers set up during the fire, and its own mobile unit.
Community members are still reporting similar symptoms, including headaches and nausea, which they attribute to the putrid odor from the rotting food and related conditions, Olivares said. Most patients also arrive with respiratory issues, such as cough, congestion, and asthma complications, according to Dr. Demetrio Cardenas, chief medical officer for Via Care.
Far from business as usual
Business owner Manuel Orozco, 59, isn’t putting much stock in what he hears about aid coming to neighbors of Lineage Inc.
“I heard someone gave $2 million, so where’s that money?” the owner of Jim’s Burgers asked.
From the first day on June 17 when the fire broke out, allegedly when subcontractor Altus Power was working on solar panels on the roof, through Day 22, Orozco said his business has dipped 50% or more. So far, he has kept regular work days for his 10 employees, mindful they need the pay.
On July 9, as he wiped down red booths and aluminum tables, Orozco said the ordeal hasn’t ended. It’s just evolved. First, there was smoke and threat of fire, and now there’s the stench of rotting meat and continued setbacks.
“We stay with the smell. Nothing will change,” Orozco said. “We just need people to come in. They closed the road. People don’t know how to get to the drive-thru. They keep bringing in masks. I say, we don’t need all that.”
Chary of news outlets interviewing him on TV and taking his photo, Orozco shrugs. The publicity hasn’t translated to the return of customers.
“If no one knows me but my customers, I’ll be happy,” he said. “I just want to be in my business.”
Face-to-face with Lineage and company
Bridging the divide between angry residents and city and county leaders could be as simple as better dissemination of information and building trust, acknowledged by Bass and L.A. City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado.
Rivera, of Lineage Inc., went through a timeline of events, and assured the crowd no ammonia burned in the blaze.
“I know the last few weeks have been extremely difficult and I understand the uncertainty, the frustration, and the disruption that it’s caused, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, reporting that Clean Harbor, an environmental cleanup firm that worked the Eaton fire, is in charge of debris and waste removal as well as odor control.
Bryan Martin, vice president of emergency response and crisis management at Clean Harbor, reported as of July 9, the company has removed about 1.4 million pounds of solid material, and that selective structural removal has begun.
“The work will continue to move forward with a strong focus, safety-controlled execution, and the protection of workers, community and surrounding properties,” Martin said.
Continuing questions over a 2024 fire in the same Lineage warehouse has put Bass on high alert about industrial facilities and complexes near residential areas.
“We need to evaluate them for potential environmental problems and for those facilities that might need to be closed, they will be evaluated and the community will participate in that decision,” she said.
Capris Maddox, executive director of the Civil and Human Rights and Equity department for the city of Los Angeles, said the mayor has issued an executive order paving the way for such a survey to examine facilities in East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights and the San Fernando Valley.
“This will happen after we get through the immediate issues right now,” Maddox said. “Mayor Bass is not going to tolerate environmental discrimination.”
Living in an environmental disaster zone
On Day 22 after the warehouse blaze erupted, Leticia Garcia, 58, emerged from her Indiana Street home of 22 years, to supervise two of her sons in a weekly chore: spray washing black garbage bins clean and trimming the grass on their front lawn.
Her home is a three-minute walk down the street to Lineage Logistics warehouse. Their street remains closed to thru traffic, part of a haul route that Bass said will be reviewed and finalized by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to limit the impact of a steady stream of trucks on the neighborhood.
Garcia knows the impact well. Her son Miguel Dominguez, 37, said since moving in in 2004, they have been awakened by the rumble of delivery trucks reverberating down their street at all hours.
“All the houses would shake,” Dominguez said.
Asked her take on the situation, Garcia said one word: “feo.” Ugly.
The family still remembers city officials visiting them in 2020 and explaining how they need to remediate the soil in their front yard. Their home sits in the area affected by toxic lead and arsenic pollution from the Exide car battery recycling plant in nearby Vernon.
With her son translating, Garcia said her breathing is still not as easy as before the fire, and she can’t open her windows at night because of the noxious smell of rotting food.
Everyone in the home followed the shelter-at-home orders and checked notices about poor air quality from the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The agency warned about the smoke that came into their home carried PM2.5, microscopic particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs.
Meanwhile, Lineage’s Rivera said, as in the case in the 2024 roof blaze, they cannot determine what happened with the solar array to cause this latest fire. The official cause of the fire hasn’t been determined, he said.
About 10 houses down from Lineage, Miguel Dominguez still thinks about how he, his mother and siblings had no choice but to hunker down less than a mile from the blaze. They closed all vents, windows, and doors, even though the smoke still made it inside the home.
“Where do we go? We had no capital to rent a room,” he said. “And I had to keep working. The bills didn’t stop when the fire started.”
Dominguez said it’s wishful thinking to hope and see the warehouse replaced by housing. The railroad tracks near the warehouse makes for a vital backbone to any supply chain business.
But pushed to imagine, he said. “What do I want to happen to the warehouse? I wish it would disappear forever.”