It’s been six days. Why can’t L.A. firefighters put out blaze at Boyle Heights cold storage facility? 22%
By Salvador Hernandez49% Alex Wigglesworth0% Clara Harter64%
6/22/2026, 2:22:05 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Unattributed Quote, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Hasty Generalization, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 15% saturation with 174 hits. Analysis detected 1,159 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,161 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 35.3% and a BS Rank of 22% (17,259 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 78.90% of the article peer group.
To understand why it’s been so hard for firefighters to contain a blaze that’s been burning for six days at a Boyle Heights cold storage facility — and why it will still take days to snuff out — consider the maze-like terrain.
The building, about the size of a city block, is filled with an estimated 85 million pounds of frozen food.
It is more of a giant ice chest than a typical warehouse, with metal walls and thick foam insulation that have made it difficult to dismantle, officials say.
Jamie Stewart, a public information officer with the Los Angeles Fire Department, likened the construction to “two giant Yeti coolers” positioned side by side.
Inside are enormous steel racks, about 50 feet tall and 600 feet long, stacked with the frozen food, he said.
Large portions of the roof have collapsed and are now resting atop those racks, so it has been unsafe for firefighters to enter, he said.
The building is so big and the flames are in such hard-to-reach areas that firefighters have needed to get creative with their approach, using water-dropping helicopters and aerial surveillance drones, he said.
They also have been limited in how they’re fighting the fire from the roof because of the solar panels, and because extra weight may pose a risk to the integrity of the building, said Capt.
Anthony Tubbs.
Fire officials were unable to cut off power to the roof until two days ago, he added, meaning that electricity had still been flowing.
“It added another layer of complexity,” he said.
The dynamics have added up to one of the most unusual and challenging fire fights the city has ever seen.
And because the facility is in the center of a densely populated area, the lingering fire is sending smoke into neighborhoods across the region, including blanketing downtown L.A. and Dodger Stadium.
The fire continued to burn Monday as firefighters continued their campaign to pull apart the structure and get at the flames hidden inside.
A pile of mangled metal, foam, wood and plastic scattered along Union Pacific Avenue illustrated firefighters' strategy.
Using cranes and bulldozers, firefighters over the weekend peeled off a two-story-high wall so they could shoot thousands of gallons of water into the building interior through hoses.
On Monday, they planned to switch out the hoses for a “water cannon,” which can blast out water at a faster rate, Tubbs said.
Los Angeles Fire Chief Jaime Moore said he anticipated that crews would extinguish the stubborn blaze by the middle of the week and return the building to its operator, Lineage Logistics, on Friday.
“I know it’s very ambitious considering what’s happened in the past, but that’s what my goal is, and that’s what we’re working toward now,” Moore said at a Monday afternoon news conference.
A similar blaze ignited at a cold storage warehouse operated by Lineage Logistics in Finley, Wash., in 2024 and reportedly took 60 days to extinguish.
Moore said he anticipated the Boyle Heights fire being extinguished significantly faster due to the amount of resources assigned.
Nevertheless, the ongoing incident has generated frustration among Eastside residents over the potential health risks they are exposed to and the length of time it is taking to resolve.
“I want to be very clear that this crisis is not over,” said City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights, at the news conference.
“Families are still dealing with the smoke, odor, ash, closed parks and community spaces, disrupted routines and serious concerns about what they are breathing.
And people are tired, they are anxious, and they deserve answers.”
Moore said fire activity had continued to decrease throughout Monday and that smoke conditions in surrounding areas had “improved significantly.”
Over the last six days, LAFD personnel have been pulled from stations across the city to assist with the incident, he said.
On Monday, fire crews from departments from across the region arrived to help battle the blaze, allowing a portion of Fire Department personnel to resume their normal duties, he said.
The blaze at the nearly 500,000-square-foot commercial building began Wednesday.
Fire officials suspect the fire began on the roof, causing a partial collapse that allowed flames into the facility, Tubbs said.
Lineage Logistics, the tenant-operator of the building, said in a statement that it believes the fire began while third-party contractors were testing the rooftop solar array.
The company said it had donated $2 million to the California Community Foundation to be distributed to community members affected by the fire.
According to the department, Wednesday’s fire wasn’t the first reported at the facility.
Firefighters battled a blaze that appeared to have originated in the solar panels on the split-level roof in August of 2024, according to the fire department.
That time, they were able to extinguish the flames in 48 minutes, according to a news release.
Firefighters have faced increasingly complex fires at large facilities amid a rapid expansion of the logistics industry, according to a report from the California State Firefighters’ Assn. released earlier this year.
The structures often “represent a unique intersection of high-density combustible loads and complex internal geometries that challenge even the most robust fire protection systems,” it states.
In April, a fire at a 1.2 million-square-foot Kimberly-Clark paper goods warehouse in Ontario grew to six alarms, requiring 120 engine companies to bring it under control.
Earlier this month, a fire that burned for several days destroyed a million-square-foot Medline medical supply warehouse in Tracy.
The fire is currently burning on Los Angeles' Eastside, which has a history of bearing the brunt of environmental ills.
“Boyle Heights, carries more than its fair share [of] freeways, warehouses, industrial land, rail corridors, and pollution resources that have shaped daily life here for generations,” Jurado said Monday.
“Brown communities of the Eastside shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of all the environmental injustice.”
Jurado said she would introduce motions to the City Council this week asking for the release of air quality and environmental testing results in English and Spanish as well as a report on what materials were present at the facility, what burned and what potential health and environmental effects remained.
As the blaze spewed smoke into the surrounding community, several schools announced they would temporarily relocate to other locations this week.
Activities scheduled at Dena Elementary and Dacotah Early Education Center are both being relocated to Sunrise Elementary School on East 7th Street, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced on social media Sunday evening.
Eastman Early Education Center activities are being relocated to Humphreys Elementary, and Stevenson Middle School activities will be relocated to Belvedere Middle School, according to the announcement.
Regulatory monitors show that air quality levels ranged from “unhealthy for sensitive groups” to “very unhealthy” since Saturday night in the areas of Los Angeles County, the San Gabriel Valley and northwest San Bernardino Valley.
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