Warehouse blaze fading but health worries remain

As Boyle Heights fire winds down, residents are left with pollution and financial costs.

- By Salvador Hernandez, Ruben Vives and Alex Wigglesworth

GENARO MOLINA Los Angeles Times A HELICOPTER finishes a water drop at a cold storage facility that has burned for more than a week.

A fire that has burned at a Boyle Heights warehouse for more than a week is nearly out, officials said Wednesday, but residents in many Eastside communities were just beginning to assess the health implications from days of dirty air as well as significant economic losses.

The announcement coincided with the official expiration of a particle pollution advisory that has kept residents inside and on edge for days as firefighters worked to get a handle on the hazardous situation.

Fire Chief Jaime Moore tasked crews with completing knockdown by the end of the day, hoping to wrap up the noxious and stubborn fire, which has burned for eight days.

Although crews are making “great progress” toward meeting the chief’s goal — and there are no more large columns of smoke — there are still a few hot spots burning inside the building, department spokesperson Capt. Anthony Tubbs said at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.

“Until the incident commander surveys that whole building and we use our drones equipped with infra-thermal imaging,” he said, “we won't be able to give an exact time for when we say ‘knockdown.’ ”

Just before noon, as crews endeavored to put out the remaining flames inside the nearly 500,000-square-foot cold storage facility, a series of water-dropping helicopters dumped 480 gallons of water at a time through a hole in the roof. Firefighters were continuing a strategy they'd employed the last few days — shooting thousands of gallons of water into the massive warehouse from outside.