Fire department issues urgent warning as choking smoke from Boyle Heights warehouse blaze covers city

Fire department officials are urging Los Angeles residents to stay indoors as heavy smoke from a days-old warehouse fire spread across the city.

The fire broke out Wednesday at the the Lineage Logistics cold-storage facility in Boyle Heights and quickly escalated into a hazardous materials incident before firefighters contained the flames.

The blaze then reignited on Thursday, leading officials to issue shelter-in-place orders. As of Saturday morning, smoke could be seen covering parts of the city as residents complained of fumes from the blaze.

The LA Fire Department said residents should stay inside and use air conditioning instead of opening windows, noting the presence of unsafe “products of combustion” inside the facility.

“These products of combustion are just not good for anybody to breathe, period,” an LAFD spokesperson said.

Most of the city should expect to smell the fire, the spokesperson added, as residents from as far away as Century City complained of the odors on Saturday.

Smoke from the blaze has covered much of downtown LA, and the air quality in Echo Park, Silver Lake, and Hollywood was considered unhealthy as of Saturday morning.

The fire department’s aggressive approach to battling the blaze has contributed to the smokier conditions, LAFD Captain Branden Silverman said in an update Friday, adding there were no hazardous materials in the smoke.

“From the beginning, we never found any hazardous materials within that smoke,” he said. “Although no smoke is good smoke. You don’t want to breathe smoke if you can avoid it whatsoever.” 

The fire department believes the fire could persist for days and even weeks, the spokesperson said.

The cause of the fire remains unclear.

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