# What happened at the Boyle Heights warehouse fire — a report for the community

*A plain-language accountability report. Prepared by Sero · sero.uno · A community transparency project · CC BY 4.0. Last updated June 25, 2026.*

**Our standard:** everything here is drawn from public records and official sources, and we tell you where each fact comes from. We mark what is **confirmed**, what is **still unknown**, and what is **our analysis** versus established fact. We do not guess, and we do not accuse anyone of a crime — we lay out what the documents show and let you decide. Real transparency means you can actually understand it, so this is written for everyone, not just lawyers.

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## In one minute

On **June 17, 2026**, a large cold-storage warehouse in Boyle Heights — at **1400 S. Los Palos Street**, run by a company called **Lineage** — caught fire. The fire involved the building's **rooftop solar panels**, and the building's **ammonia** refrigeration line was damaged in the blaze. Roughly **85 million pounds of frozen food** were inside. Smoke spread across the region for days. City, county, and state emergencies were declared. **No one was reported injured.** Firefighters **knocked the fire down about 6 p.m. on June 24, 2026** — roughly a week after it started — with full extinguishment targeted for about **Friday, June 26.**

Three things you should know:
1. **This same roof caught fire before** — in **August 2024.** This was not the first time.
2. **Officials said the smoke was safe but have not released the actual test numbers** for the most dangerous chemicals. You have a right to that data.
3. **The records that would show whether anything was fixed after the 2024 fire are being withheld** — and we're working to get them released.

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## What's in the air — and what we don't know

Officials and the company said there were "no measurable ammonia" levels in the neighborhood and "nothing beyond normal structure-fire smoke." That may turn out to be true — but **as of this writing, they had not released the actual measurements** (the numbers for fine particles, ammonia, and other chemicals). One neighborhood sensor briefly hit an air-quality reading of **621** (community sensor; reported) (anything over 300 is "hazardous").

Here's the part that matters for your health: **a fire like this is not ordinary smoke.** When the building's foam insulation and plastics burn, they can release **hydrogen cyanide** and **carbon monoxide** (which are especially dangerous together), and the lithium forklift batteries can release **hydrogen fluoride**. This is no longer hypothetical: **LAFD confirmed it detected hydrogen fluoride** consistent with a lithium-ion battery — likely a battery-powered forklift — igniting. (Officials also reported no measurable community ammonia, and Lineage removed the remaining ammonia offsite.) Add the ammonia, fine particles, and the heavy ash that settles on homes and gardens. **Standard air-quality (AQI) readings do not capture most of these** — they only measure fine-particle *mass*, not the toxic gases or the ash. That's why **ash and soil testing**, not just air monitors, are the right tools — and why we and Councilmember Ysabel Jurado are demanding the full test results be released **in English and Spanish**.

This isn't speculation — it's what the published medical research shows. Reviewing the peer-reviewed science, we found three things worth knowing. First, smoke from fires like this is reliably linked to more asthma attacks, breathing problems, heart problems, and hospital visits — and some studies find this kind of smoke is **more** harmful than the everyday air pollution AQI is built to measure. Second, **the effects aren't only on the bad-air days** — studies track raised illness for weeks to months afterward, and ammonia exposure in particular can leave lasting asthma-like breathing problems. Third, **children, pregnant people, older adults, and anyone with asthma or heart conditions are hit hardest.** None of this means any one person's illness was definitely caused by this fire — it can't, and we won't claim it. It means the risk is real enough that **getting checked and keeping records is a reasonable, science-backed thing to do.** (The full review, with links to every study, is in our research file *Health_Evidence_Review.md*.)

*If you or your family had symptoms — coughing, headaches, eye/throat irritation, breathing trouble — that's worth documenting with your doctor now, both for your health and for the record. For real-time "what to do" guidance, see the Ktown Team SOS page: sos.ktown.team/fire.*

## This wasn't the first time

The single most important fact in this whole story: **the same rooftop caught fire on August 14, 2024.** Firefighters put that one out in about 48 minutes. The Fire Department's own records confirm it.

So the central question is simple and fair: **after the roof caught fire in 2024, did anyone inspect or fix it?** We checked the city's public building-permit records (Department of Building and Safety). They show **no permit for repairing or replacing the rooftop solar system** in the nearly two years between the 2024 fire and the 2026 fire. *(An important caution: a missing permit doesn't prove no work was done — work could have been unpermitted or minor. But the public record shows no permitted repair.)* The deeper inspection records that would answer this for certain are held by the Fire Department — and are currently being withheld. More on that below.

## What's stored there

This is a refrigerated warehouse that uses **anhydrous ammonia** — a toxic, corrosive gas — to keep food frozen. According to the facility's own federal safety filing, it holds up to about **12,300 pounds** of it, and there was a smaller ammonia **release at this site in 2020**. The building is about **479,000 square feet**, built in 2018.

And the location matters: California's own environmental-screening tool ranks this spot in the **highest tier (90th–100th percentile) for pollution burden.** This is a neighborhood already carrying far more than its share of industrial pollution — which is exactly why a hazard like this deserves a higher standard of care, not a lower one.

## Who owns what

There are several different parties, and they are already pointing at each other:
- **Lineage** operates the warehouse and the ammonia system. It says it is only the **tenant** and does **not** own the building or the rooftop solar panels.
- **Altus Power** owns the rooftop solar array. Lineage publicly blamed Altus's contractors for starting the fire; **Altus disputes that**, saying the cause "has yet to be determined."
- The **building's owner** is a separate party — reported in the news as **Chill Build Los Angeles I, LLC** (the public county assessor portal doesn't list the name; confirming it means pulling the recorded deed). The rooftop array is held by **Los Palos Street Operating, LLC** (an Altus company), and the contractor working on it was **Pearce**, part of **CBRE**.

The official cause is **still under investigation.** Nobody has been determined to be at fault — but the question of *who was responsible for that rooftop equipment, and whether it was ever fixed,* is the heart of the matter.

*One note on Lineage itself: it became a public company (Nasdaq: LINE) in July 2024, but it is still **controlled** by its founders' firm, Bay Grove, which holds more than half the voting power. Co-Executive Chairmen Adam Forste and Kevin Marchetti control it; Greg Lehmkuhl is CEO. Most of the public shares are held by passive index funds (Vanguard is the largest), which implies nothing about this incident. Details are in our companion file `Ownership_and_Shareholders.md`. (Confirmed — 2026 company proxy.)*

## The bigger picture — handled honestly

It's natural to ask: is this company unusually dangerous? We looked carefully, using the federal government's own accident database, and we want to be straight with you: **the honest answer is that this is an industry-wide problem, not just one company.** Lineage's rate of ammonia accidents is statistically about the same as its largest competitor's. What *does* stand out is severity — Lineage has had worker deaths at other sites and **two catastrophic fires** (this one, and a different facility in Finley, Washington that burned for roughly 60 days (about two months) in 2024).

We think the honest version is actually the stronger one: **cold-storage warehouses full of ammonia and combustible foam, now topped with rooftop solar, are an under-regulated hazard across the whole industry** — and they sit in neighborhoods like ours. The fix isn't just blaming one company; it's raising the safety standard for all of them, starting where the burden is heaviest.

One more documented fact, stated plainly and without spin: the cold-storage industry trade groups that Lineage helps lead have lobbied to **weaken** the federal chemical-safety rules, and Lineage lobbied the city about on-site power and electrical systems at this very facility — a "Big Bear" fuel cell, a "rapid shutoff device," and a 2026 "linear generator interconnection." Separately, after the fire, Lineage registered a second city lobbying firm, **M Strategic Communications**, for a "FIRE IMPACT" crisis-communications engagement (filed June 19, 2026, two days after the fire), authorized to lobby the Mayor's Office, City Attorney, City Council, Building & Safety, and LAFD (confirmed — LA City Ethics). We don't know the outcomes of that lobbying, and we're not suggesting anything improper — but it's part of the public record, and you should know it.

## What officials are doing

- The **Mayor** and **Governor** declared emergencies (June 20).
- On **June 23**, the **County Board of Supervisors** (Supervisor Solis with Supervisor Hahn) passed a motion directing the County to work with **city and state partners** to **investigate the facility, pursue potential enforcement, and set up a claims process** for impacted residents and businesses, and **ratifying the joint local emergency declaration** — with reports due in 30 and 90 days.
- On **June 23**, **Councilmember Jurado** introduced a **three-motion City Council package** — (1) air-quality relief funding, (2) expanded DASH transit, and (3) an investigation motion directing LAFD to report on the cause, the facility's compliance history, and oversight — and called for an **independent investigation** and **bilingual, plain-language** public release of the air and chemical data.

These are real steps. But — and this connects to the preparedness question many of you are asking — a region that has been through repeated fires and a pandemic should not be **scrambling for air purifiers mid-crisis.** Doing more *after* a preventable disaster is not the same as being ready for it.

## What's being hidden — and the fight to get it out

We filed a formal public-records request with the Fire Department for the basic safety records: the 2024 fire's cause, any inspections after it, and the facility's chemical-safety filings. The Department **released some** (it pointed us to other offices for permits and ownership) but is **withholding** the most important parts — the post-2024 inspections and the chemical-safety records — by claiming they're all part of the "active investigation."

We believe that's too broad, and the law appears to agree: a fire investigation generally **cannot** lock away ordinary safety and regulatory records, and a separate state law (Health & Safety Code §25509) says a facility's hazardous-materials inventory **must** be available to the public on request. We've pushed back, and we're prepared to keep pushing — through other agencies that hold the same records, and, if necessary, in court. **The good news: most of these facts can be gotten from other doors** (we already obtained the federal ammonia filing, the permit history, and the environmental-burden data this way). And a public agency withholding the community's chemical-safety records *during a fire* is, itself, something you deserve to know.

## What we're asking for

1. **Release the actual numbers** — the full air, ash, and soil test results, in English and Spanish.
2. **An independent investigation** of the cause and of whether the 2024 problem was ever fixed.
3. **Make the responsible parties pay** the public costs — not the taxpayers.
4. **Raise the safety standard** so this category of fire is prevented, sector-wide — independent verification that hazards are actually fixed after an incident, real community air monitoring, and fire rules for these foam-panel-and-solar buildings.

## Questions worth asking

The most powerful thing a community can do is ask precise questions and insist on real answers — documents, not assurances. A few that officials and the company have not yet answered:

- After the roof caught fire in **2024**, was the rooftop solar system inspected and repaired? *Show the permits and inspection records.*
- Will you release the **full air, ash, and soil test results — every number — in English and Spanish?**
- **What chemicals** were stored in the building, and what burned?
- **Who pays** for the cleanup and for health monitoring — the company, or taxpayers?
- Before any rebuild, will there be **independent verification** — not the company's own — that the hazards are fixed?

A fuller, bilingual guide to the questions worth asking each agency, the calendar of public meetings where they carry weight, and who to contact is in our community hub (`public_hub.html`).

## What you can do

- **Document any health effects** with your doctor and keep records.
- **For real-time guidance** (smoke, masks, shelters, air quality): **sos.ktown.team/fire**.
- **Report problems** — air quality to South Coast AQMD (1-800-CUT-SMOG); county environmental health (888-700-9995); resources at 211.
- **Speak up** — public comment to the County Board and your Councilmember carries weight, especially as the 30- and 90-day reports come due.

## How we know this (and how to check us)

Every fact here comes from a public source: the Fire Department's own releases and records request response, the EPA and CalEPA databases, the county Assessor and building-permit records, SEC filings, the County Board's agenda, and news reporting. The detailed, sourced version — with the legal citations and the raw documents — backs up every line of this report and is available on request. Where something is still unknown, we said so. Where we're giving our reading rather than a proven fact, we flagged it. If we get something wrong, we'll correct it — that's the standard.

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*Prepared by Sero · sero.uno · A community transparency project · CC BY 4.0. This is general information, not legal or medical advice. The Lineage fire is also the reason the Ktown Team SOS system (sos.ktown.team) exists — because emergencies like this can happen to any community, anytime, and people deserve to be ready and informed.*
