A fire at a cold-storage warehouse in Los Angeles has been burning for days. Here’s what we know

 

Smoke from a dayslong fire filled the sky Sunday at a nearly 500,000-square-foot warehouse in Los Angeles.

Jae C. Hong/AP

The thick, noxious smoke billowing out of a Los Angeles warehouse has been a fixture of the city’s skyline for almost a week as crews race to contain a fire at a cold-storage facility holding 85 million pounds of frozen food.

As of Monday afternoon, significant progress has been made on the containing the blaze, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said, and the threat of hazardous chemicals have been mitigated.

“I expect that they will continue to make progress on this fire and get to its conclusion in the next few days,” Derek Chapman, deputy fire chief with the Los Angeles Fire Department, said during a press briefing Monday.

“The smell of smoke has reached most of the city, and we encourage everyone to limit exposure as much as possible,” the Los Angeles Fire Department said over the weekend.

Here’s what we know:

What caused this disaster, and when did it start?

“Lineage does not own the building or its rooftop solar array,” said Lineage, the company that leases and operates the warehouse. “We are the tenant-operator of the warehouse building and lease the roof to a third-party solar company, which is responsible for operating and maintaining the array.”

“We believe the fire originated on the roof on Wednesday while the company’s subcontractors were servicing the solar array,” Lineage said.

According to its website, Lineage is a “worldwide leader in cold storage and logistics.”

In 2024, a Lineage facility in Washington state caught fire and smoldered for two months, Northwest Public Broadcasting reported. Nearby residents in Finley have reported an array of health problems.

Heavy smoke billows from a cold-storage warehouse Saturday in Los Angeles, three days after a fire started at the facility.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

The Los Angeles Fire Department has not released an official cause for the blaze, which started around 2:35 p.m. Wednesday at 1400 S. Los Palos St. There, crews discovered flames shooting out from the roof and quickly “engaged in offensive suppression,” LAFD said.

But 15 minutes into their efforts, a suspected ammonia leak forced firefighters to act defensively.

Ammonia is used in some refrigeration systems to keep buildings cold, Lineage said.

“We can confirm that no measurable ammonia concentrations have been recorded in the community since the fire began,” the company said. “We also proactively took steps to pump out the ammonia and transport it offsite, removing the possibility of ammonia posing a risk to the community.”

As of Monday afternoon, the threat of hazardous chemicals has been mitigated, Chapman said.

The Los Angeles City Fire Department on Sunday night began applying about 6,000 gallons of water per minute to the building, allowing crews to get a foothold on the fire, Chapman said.

What makes this fire so hard to fight?
“The sheer size of this structure … largely prevented effective ground access,” the fire department said. “Though not typically deployed in structure fires due to safety concerns, LAFD helicopters performed water drops to knock down the bulk of the flames.”