L.A. city and county officials move to bolster recovery from Boyle Heights warehouse fire
Weeks after a warehouse fire blanketed Boyle Heights with smoke, ash and swarms of flies, Los Angeles city and county officials unveiled a slate of measures aimed at speeding recovery, increasing corporate accountability and expanding financial assistance for residents and businesses affected by the disaster.
City Council member Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights, introduced a series of measures at City Hall on Tuesday, including setting aside up to $10 million for odor and pest control and direct aid to residents.
The series of motions must first be approved by a committee before coming to the floor for a vote. Mason Santa Maria, a spokesperson for Jurado, said he believes the City Council will act quickly.
“For nearly seven weeks, families have lived with smoke and ash, odor, flies and pests, disruption and uncertainty. Seven weeks of summer memories that our children will never get back,” Jurado said at a news conference before Tuesday’s council meeting. “Residents did not cause this disaster, but were forced to suffer its consequences — an environmental burden that the Eastside has carried for generations.”
Representatives of Lineage, which operated the burned-out cold storage warehouse, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
At the news conference, Jurado appealed to Gov. Gavin Newsom to deploy additional state resources for the cleanup effort. The governor declared a state of emergency in the first days of the disaster, sending thousands of N95 masks and air purifiers to Boyle Heights aimed at helping residents impacted by the unhealthy conditions.
“We’re urging, we’re begging, we’re pleading to send more resources,” Jurado said. “We haven’t seen the governor down here. I would hope he would come and visit.”
Mayor Karen Bass’s 45-day cleanup deadline is fast approaching, and Jurado was doubtful that Lineagecould meet it. If it fails, the company would face financial consequences.
On Monday, Lineage officials estimated the company had removed approximately 80% of food waste in the warehouse, up from 60% on July 31.
Jurado’s motion also calls on the City Council to consider slapping responsible parties with much steeper fines — ranging from $25,000 to $1 million — for future incidents. The move is intended to create penalties steep enough that they can’t be shrugged off as the “cost of doing business,” according to council documents. Another motion directs the city attorney to explore legal action against any responsible parties to recoup taxpayer dollars spent on the emergency.
Jurado that the city will seek legal consequences for both Lineage and Altus Power, which reportedly was conducting maintenance on solar panels atop the warehouse when the fire broke out. Her move on the council floor Tuesday called for halting cold-storage companies like Lineage from doing business in the Boyle Heights area for up to two years.
Representatives at Altus didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
At its meeting Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors approved a motion directing the county Department of Public Health to work with legal counsel to provide the board with recommendations for potentially increasing penalties for companies responsible for public health violations.
Beginning in July, the public health department hit Lineage with fines of $500 a day for “unsanitary and nuisance” conditions at the site of the fire.
“It’s only fair to ensure that companies that place our environmental and public health at risk are held accountable and contribute to funding these recovery tools,” Supervisor Hilda Solis, the measure’s sponsor, said.
The board motion calls on county officials to consider requiring that “businesses with high-risk of community exposure to environmental hazards located in proximity to sensitive locations” submit community health and safety plans to the public health department.
The motion also would launch a Small Business Interruption Fund to help impacted businesses in unincorporated parts of East L.A., as well as those affected by future emergencies.
The board also approved using money in the Countywide Business Interruption Fund, which was established in March, to help businesses affected by the Boyle Heights fire and other emergencies, including the May oil spill in East Los Angeles.
Kelly LoBianco, director of the county Department of Economic Opportunity, said “small businesses are continuing to face revenue loss” as a result of the ongoing effects of the fire.
“If you’ve been out in the area, you know that there’s still a persistent smell. With the heat wave, it exacerbates things,” LoBianco said during the meeting. “Folks have initially had property damage, temporary closures, workforce impacts, and they continue to have traffic impacts.”
The measure also directed the county’s director of regional planning and legal counsel to determine whether the county could help fund the Countywide Business Interruption Fund by collecting a fee from “all new manufacturing, recycling, warehouse, and any industrial land use facilities that have the potential to negatively impact the economic vitality of small businesses due to their operations in unincorporated Los Angeles County.”
Carlos Singer, chief policy officer for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said in written comments submitted ahead of Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting that the chamber supports “the motion’s core relief provision.”
But he said the chamber of commerce requested amendments to the motion, including provisions to minimize the paperwork businesses will have to fill out in order to comply, to ensure that the scope of the requirements isn’t too broad, and to otherwise ensure the motion isn’t too onerous for businesses that played no role in the warehouse disaster.
The Board of Supervisors did not take up the requested amendments before voting for the motion.