A week after a fire broke out at Lineage Logistics’ cold storage warehouse in Boyle Heights, smoke still drifts across the region and firefighters have yet to enter the building. As the blaze enters its second week, attention has shifted from the fire itself to what residents have been exposed to and how officials are determining that the air is safe.

The fire began June 17 at Lineage’s Big Bear facility, a 500,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse capable of storing up to 85 million pounds of frozen food. The company has said it believes the blaze started while a subcontractor was testing rooftop solar equipment, but the official cause remains under investigation.

Since then, firefighters have faced an unusually difficult situation. The warehouse roof collapsed early in the fire, and the insulated freezer construction has trapped heat inside the structure. LAFD Chief Jaime Moore has repeatedly said firefighters will not enter the building because of the risk of collapse. Instead, crews have been removing exterior walls and attacking the fire from outside while waiting for temperatures to fall.

During the first hours of the incident, an ammonia leak prompted a shelter-in-place order, and authorities later detected hydrogen fluoride, a hazardous gas associated with lithium-ion battery fires. Officials say the ammonia has since been removed from the site and that current conditions do not warrant evacuation. At the same time, the South Coast Air Quality Management District has maintained particulate pollution advisories for much of the region because of smoke from the fire.

Much of the public discussion now centers on a gap between what officials are claiming and what air monitoring systems can actually tell us. Officials have repeatedly pointed to monitoring data to reassure residents, while scientists emphasize that those systems were not designed to answer every question people have about the smoke.

The Air Quality Index, the metric most residents encounter through AirNow, PurpleAir, and local weather reports, is designed to measure particulate pollution. It provides useful information about how much smoke is present in the air. What it does not do is identify every chemical contained within that smoke. That distinction matters when the source is not a brush fire but a large industrial warehouse containing refrigeration systems, insulation materials, batteries, and millions of pounds of stored goods.

Yifang Zhu, an air quality researcher at UCLA, has cautioned that industrial fires can release pollutants that routine monitoring systems are not designed to capture. Researchers studying the January 2025 firestorm reached a similar conclusion, finding that conventional air quality measurements may not fully characterize exposure when large amounts of manufactured materials burn.

None of this proves that officials have understated the danger, but it does suggest that the available data may be less complete than many residents assume. Air monitoring can tell us a lot about particulate pollution, but it cannot answer every question people have about the chemical composition of that pollution. That distinction helps explain why the official response and public reaction have often seemed to be talking past one another.

The fire has also renewed questions about a land-use pattern that is common across Los Angeles but rarely receives attention until something goes wrong. Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles contain concentrations of freight facilities, warehouses, rail infrastructure, and industrial uses that are uncommon in wealthier parts of the city. Like many of these other hazardous sites, the Lineage warehouse sits immediately adjacent to homes, schools, parks, and small businesses. Environmental justice advocates have argued for decades that land-use decisions have concentrated environmental hazards in working-class Latino communities while shielding other neighborhoods from similar risks.

Residents and advocates have repeatedly pointed to that history throughout the past week. The former Exide battery recycling plant left behind one of the largest environmental cleanups in California history. A ruptured oil pipeline spilled thousands of gallons into the Los Angeles River just last month. Community organizations such as East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice have spent years arguing that working-class Latino neighborhoods are routinely expected to tolerate environmental hazards that would generate a different response elsewhere.

Assemblymember Jessica Caloza made a similar point during a weekend press conference, arguing that immigrant and working-class communities continue to bear a disproportionate share of environmental harms. Boyle Heights Councilmember Ysabel Jurado has spent the week pressing agencies for clearer information about what burned, what remains inside the warehouse, and how air quality findings are being communicated to residents.

Lineage Logistics, the company at the center of this disaster, is not a small operator navigating an unfamiliar crisis. The company is the world’s largest cold-storage owner, with hundreds of facilities across North America and billions of dollars in annual revenue. Last year alone, the company raised $4.44 billion in what was then the largest U.S. stock market debut of the year.

That scale matters because the Boyle Heights fire was not the first warning sign. In 2020, Cal/OSHA cited the facility for multiple workplace safety violations, including alleged deficiencies related to emergency preparedness and worker training. Most of those citations were later reduced or withdrawn after the company challenged them. In Finley, Washington, a Lineage cold-storage warehouse burned for weeks following a 2024 fire. Residents later filed lawsuits alleging ongoing health impacts and environmental damage. Lineage disputes those allegations, but the similarities have drawn attention as another Lineage warehouse burns for days while nearby residents seek answers about potential exposure.

Federal and state enforcement records show additional incidents involving ammonia releases and alleged environmental or workplace safety violations at Lineage facilities in multiple states. Viewed individually, each case has its own circumstances. But taken together, they raise broader questions about whether the industry’s largest player has failed to anticipate and mitigate the risks that come with operating facilities that store hazardous materials in close proximity to residential communities.

Those issues are likely to become part of multiple investigations now underway. Cal/OSHA has opened inspections involving both Lineage and Pearce Services, the contractor involved in the Boyle Heights fire. Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia has said his office is tracking the public costs of the response. Marissa Roy, a deputy attorney general running for Los Angeles city attorney, has argued that companies responsible for the fire should be held accountable if investigators determine negligence contributed to the disaster.