Boyle Heights Response & Recovery
Response & recovery overview
This page serves as an archive of Lineage’s unprecedented cleanup effort following the June 17 fire at our Los Palos Street facility. It documents how Lineage mobilized resources, supported the community and completed cleanup, with access to ongoing response updates, photographs, air monitoring data and supporting documents.
To report air quality issues such as odors, dust, or smoke from this facility, call the South Coast Air Quality Management District at 1-800-CUT-SMOG.
See the cleanup
The cleanup in photographs
These photographs documented the Los Palos facility before the fire and the cleanup that followed, from July 3 through September 9, 2026. Explore the images to see how the site changed during the effort.
What Happened & How We Responded
When a rooftop solar fire broke out on June 17, 2026, it impacted the surrounding community. In its wake, Lineage invested significant resources in the emergency response, executed an unprecedented cleanup and did our best to support our neighbors. Below is our account of what happened:
Lineage’s Los Palos team helped feed Los Angeles and the world.
Cold storage is the backbone of California’s $510 billion food industry, which provides some 2.8M jobs to Californians.
Temperature control allows food producers to store food products until they are ready for consumption. Much of the food that families purchase—be that at a restaurant or in a grocery store—moves through cold storage on its journey to your plate.
As of 2026, Lineage supplied jobs to some 2,700 team members in California, all of whom play an important part in helping feed families across the region. In fact, nearly 1,800 California food companies depend on the Lineage network to reach consumers.
Opened in 2018, Lineage’s Los Palos facility revitalized a derelict space and turned it into a best-in-class cold storage operation that employed 122 team members who focused on supplying baked goods, proteins and seafood for local consumption. The facility stored 88M pounds of food on behalf of food companies from across Southern California.
Lineage raised safety concerns about the rooftop solar array before the fire
The solar array on the Los Palos facility’s rooftop does not power Lineage's warehouse. It is owned, operated and maintained by Altus Power who sells the power to LADWP.
After a smaller fire broke out on the array in 2024, the solar array was de-energized (i.e. turned off) and Lineage called for enhanced safety measures before the array could be re-energized. Altus retained Pearce Services to help them reconfigure the array.
Less than a week before the fire broke out, Lineage notified Altus in writing that the system should not be re-energized until critical safety tests were completed.
Altus and Pearce disregarded Lineage’s written safety directives and re-energized the defective rooftop solar array before required safety checks were completed – days before the fire.
The solar array started the fire on the roof of the building
On June 17, 2026, a fire ignited on the roof of the Los Palos Street warehouse. The fire burned out of control until June 24 and flareups continued in the debris until the weekend of July 4.
The only ignition source not ruled out by LAFD investigation was "solar panels and their connected components." This was a solar fire.
The fire ignited while workers from Pearce Services were on the roof performing repair work on the solar array.
The LAFD HazMat team confirmed that “all readings taken were within normal limits for a common structure fire, with no ammonia detected.”
- LAFD HazMat team, Source: LAFD Report
Our team successfully evacuated the building and secured the ammonia used in its refrigeration systems
The site was evacuated immediately, and we are proud that no members of our team or onsite personnel were injured in the incident.
Safe is our #1 value and Lineage’s team takes great pride in our commitment to safety, and that included site leaders taking the steps necessary to ensure the safety of our refrigeration system at Los Palos.
The facility’s ammonia refrigerant was successfully pumped out of the building to storage vessels outside of the building within approximately three minutes of the report of fire. The ammonia was then pumped out of those vessels the following day and taken off site. With further tests confirming the successful draw down.
“Lineage stepped up and said whatever you need to put this fire out, we will offer it to you. We want to reduce the impact on this community,”
Lineage went above and beyond to help LAFD fight the fire
Lineage spared no expense to supply LAFD with additional resources to help it get the job done as quickly as possible. This included: private firefighters, long-range water cannons (from LA County, then Texas) and Chinook helicopter drops with more capacity than LAFD’s.
We had the private firefighters onsite for 35 days from June 20 – July 24 to further lessen the burden on LAFD, who continued to supervise periodic firefights by the private firefighters to control flareups after the primary blaze was declared knocked down on June 24. The building remained under LAFD control for 19 days, until July 6, when Lineage began cleanup.
While Lineage did not start the fire, we moved quickly to mitigate the disaster.
When the fire concluded, the building that remained was a shell of what it was on June 16. It had suffered catastrophic damage that left it unrecognizable.
Lineage hired national experts including Signal Restoration Services, Clean Harbors, Onterris Response and Recovery, and Orkin to support the fastest possible cleanup effort.
In total, Lineage spent more than $150 million and logged more than 210,000 worker hours into this cleanup. Food waste removal from the site was completed on August 29—54 days after handover from LAFD.
South Coast AQMD — the independent regulator — confirmed Lineage met its September 5 deadline for full food and debris removal, power washing, cleaning and disinfecting of the approximately 500,000 sq ft site.
Every truck trip and every worker on site was funded by Lineage. Lineage received no public funds for this cleanup. Neither Altus nor its subcontractor provided any help in this unprecedented cleanup effort.
Lineage delivered direct support to our neighbors
Lineage moved quickly to find ways to support the community members impacted by the fire. On June 21, Lineage provided $2 million for direct community aid via the California Community Foundation. That money was then dispersed by CCF to more than a dozen local nonprofit groups in Boyle Heights and East LA.
To share information, Lineage stood up a bilingual information hub on its website, a dedicated email inbox for questions, dedicated Instagram account and dedicated bilingual community support line for our neighbors to voice concerns and ask for support.
We met with the community on their terms—meeting weekly with community leaders and groups throughout the cleanup to find out what more we could do to help. One early request voiced by our neighbors was that they were still having difficulty accessing help.
So, we stood up a door-to-door outreach campaign to provide both tangible goods like air purifiers, air conditioners, N95 masks, bottled water and fly traps as well as direct financial assistance, grocery store vouchers, housing vouchers for temporary relocation and utility payment support.
We aligned with our local government partners on the support area, and we are proud to report that ~90% of the 800 households contacted due to their proximity to the site were successfully reached.
We know we are not done rebuilding trust with the community, but we truly did our best to show up for our neighbors in ways that were meaningful and helpful during a difficult time.
On September 5, 2026, Lineage completed cleanup at the Los Palos facility, meeting AQMD’s deadline.
The cleanup is complete and our commitment continues
In total, Lineage spent more than $150 million in the response and cleanup. Our team removed approximately 88 million pounds of food and millions of additional pounds of building debris over the course of more than 210,000 hours of work.
We sincerely thank the team members and partners whose dedication, creativity and tenacity supported this unprecedented cleanup effort. We also thank the Boyle Heights and East LA communities for their patience and understanding throughout an incredibly difficult time.
We also are committed to hold Altus and Pearce accountable. Not only did their actions cause the fire itself but they offered no support to the community their fire harmed. Their unwillingness to support the people they hurt at every step of this response and recovery effort was astonishing. We intend to do everything in our power to make things right for the people of this community.
As we move forward, Lineage also intends to continue to show up for our neighbors in Boyle Heights and East LA. This includes finding ways to help the community both fully recover and hopefully rebuild stronger than it was before the fire. The plans are still coming together but we look forward to sharing more in the near future. More to come!
Keeping the Community Informed
Throughout the incident, residents and community leaders had many questions. Lineage transparently shared information and facts as they were available. Throughout the incident and cleanup, Lineage shared detailed monitoring data, published truck routes and provided ongoing updates so residents could understand what was happening and how the company responded.
Our Commitment
We will continue to communicate openly, share facts as they are confirmed, and provide regular updates as the situation evolves. Our commitment to this community does not end here, and we will continue to work with officials to support the cleanup in any way we can.
Residents are encouraged to continue monitoring official local channels to stay aware.
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