The owners of the Lineage warehouse behind the massive fire in Boyle Heights have less than 40 days to clean out all the debris and rotting food inside the cold storage facility, according to the deadline given by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
For neighbors who have to live with the stench of smoke and millions of pounds of spoiled food, the trash could not be removed fast enough.
“I think it’s going too slowly,” Scarlett Escobar, who lives nearby, said after seeing not much cleanup work was being done Monday.
One of the reasons for the delay may be a back-and-forth between Lineage and Mayor Bass. Last Friday, Lineage published a letter addressed to Bass and LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis, saying there was a “serious obstacle with the cleanup.”
“Altus Power — the owner of the rooftop solar array whose equipment is suspected of starting the fire and who has publicly committed to making the Boyle Heights residents its “first concern” — sent correspondence demanding that we stop demolition of the site,” Lineage wrote. ““Hold Altus and any other party seeking to delay cleanup and fire prevention at the site to the same standard of accountability you have applied to Lineage. Direct them to stand down and allow remediation to proceed.”
Mayor Bass responded to Lineage but did not mention the claims about Altus. She instead focused on Lineage in role by saying the representatives from the logistics’ company “have not committed to the most basic steps of sharing comprehensive, real-time data about the volume of rotting food and debris being removed from the site.”
Bass also called on Lineage to move affected resident to temporary housing and mop up the smoke and toxics from their properties.
Los Angeles Councilmember Ysabel Jurado was scheduled to host a community meeting between representatives of different community organizations and Lineage Monday evening.