Boyle Heights Cold Storage Fire Prompts Emergency Declarations

Smoke from a burning cold storage warehouse in Boyle Heights continued to blanket large swaths of Los Angeles over the weekend, pushing air‑quality readings into unhealthy territory and prompting emergency declarations from city and state leaders.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued a local emergency declaration Saturday, followed hours later by a state emergency declaration from Gov. Gavin Newsom, with both citing the public health risks tied to prolonged smoke exposure.

This is the second time in two years that this warehouse has caught fire. It is operated by Lineage, a Michigan-based cold storage company, and owned by Chill Build Los Angeles LLC.

Firefighters removed parts of the exterior walls of the building to access the fire inside the structure. There was also an ammonia leak early on in the firefighting effort, but responders were able to turn the leak off at the source, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. Cold storage facilities commonly use a type of ammonia as a refrigerant. 

Firefighters said the fire could be out by the end of the week, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday morning. 

"The building’s construction continues to present operational challenges," the Los Angeles Fire Department wrote on its Instagram on Sunday evening. "Interior storage rack systems remain in place and are supporting portions of the collapsed roof, creating complex and unstable conditions that require a cautious and methodical approach." 

The roughly 500K SF warehouse at 1400 S. Los Palos St. was built in 2018. It caught on fire in August 2024, but that fire was put out in about an hour.

Lineage underscored that it owns neither the building nor the rooftop solar panels, which is where the fire is believed to have begun, the company wrote in a statement on its website. 

Lineage leases the roof to a third-party solar company, which is responsible for operating and maintaining the array, according to the statement. 

The smoke created unhealthy air quality in central LA and as far as the San Gabriel Valley and the eastern part of the San Fernando Valley, according to a Saturday release from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Air quality had broadly improved by Monday but remained "very unhealthy" in the areas immediately around the fire.

In 2024, a similarly sized cold storage warehouse in Finley, Washington, caught on fire and burned for almost two months. Even a year later, residents said they experienced health effects. 

And in April, a 1.2M SF warehouse leased to Kimberley-Clark holding toilet paper and other paper products burned down in a suspected arson.