Cleanup of LA fires has begun – and toxins are a key challenge
| Pasadena, Calif.
Amid a torrent of news swirling around the Los Angeles fires – a presidential visit Friday, rain over the weekend, and star-studded benefit concerts coming Jan. 30 – it might be easy to overlook an important step of progress. Cleanup on one of the costliest fires in U.S. history is underway.
It began Jan. 16 with an assessment of hazardous waste, and this week starts waste removal – a painstaking job that will take place in two phases. First, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is clearing visible, everyday hazardous waste from properties with damaged or destroyed buildings. It’s a massive effort, with more than 16,000 structures destroyed between the Eaton and Palisades fires – most of them residences. After this is completed, a second phase of debris removal starts, led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Monitor explains the basics of the hazardous waste removal effort:
Why We Wrote This
A visit by President Donald Trump. Smoke everywhere. Amid the news swirling around the Los Angeles fires, one might overlook the fact that cleanup on one of America’s costliest fires ever has begun.
What kinds of waste might be typically found from the LA fires?
Many residents and business owners may not realize the presence of toxins amid the rubble of burned-out homes, apartment houses, and businesses.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health explains that the combustion of siding, roofing tiles, and insulation produces ash that can contain asbestos and heavy metals like lead. People’s garages and businesses – such as filling stations – often store gasoline, paint, pesticides, and other harmful chemicals. These substances can endanger human health and the environment, polluting air, soil, groundwater, and the ocean.
Meanwhile, lithium-ion batteries are much more prevalent, found in electric vehicles, phones, and power storage packs. The EPA gained useful experience with this kind of cleanup from the 2023 Lahaina Fire in Maui, Hawaii. These batteries can reignite, explode, and leak toxic gases, explained Los Angeles County Health Officer Dr. Muntu Davis in a Jan. 26 community meeting.
“We are in a very new age in terms of fire and fire damage,” he said.
Who is responsible for removing this waste?
Los Angeles County is overseeing the process, but federal agencies have been tasked with carrying it out.
The EPA, working with partners such as the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, will survey, remove, and dispose of potentially hazardous everyday materials. In a kind of first pass-through, the EPA and its partners will remove only visible items like batteries, cleaners and solvents, oils, paint, pesticides, and obvious asbestos products, such as insulation. They will also inspect pressurized fuel cylinders such as propane tanks. The cost is free to residents and businesses. People can track progress through an EPA website, and the agency will put a sign on a property once its work is done.
But the EPA teams won’t get all the bad stuff, which can be invisible and mixed with soil and ash.
In Phase 2, led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, dangerous debris such as ash, standing walls, and chimneys will be removed. So will 6 inches of topsoil, which is likely contaminated, and burned trees.
Owners can apply for building permits now, but they won’t be able to rebuild until these two phases are complete.
How long will removal take?
The first phase for the entire area of both fires should be completed in 60 to 90 days, and the second could take up to a year, depending on how many people opt in to the Army Corps’ service, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency Regional Administrator Robert Fenton. Each EPA site might take only a few hours, and the Army Corps will work to come in behind the EPA in an assembly-line way so people can start rebuilding as quickly as possible.
Even so, some owners may want to move faster, and they can go with their own insurance or pay out-of-pocket for a private company to clean up (only the EPA can do the first phase, though). Still, that private effort will have to meet government standards for removal.
The county is encouraging people to opt in to the Army Corps program, and they can enroll starting Jan. 28. The opt-in is understandable, says Nazli Yesiller, director of the Global Waste Research Institute at California Polytechnic State University.
“I expect the Army has the necessary equipment and could do this in the proper way, rather than bringing in outside contractors who may not have done anything like this before,” says Dr. Yesiller. And as officials point out, debris removal can easily cost more than insurance plans cover.
What makes the Los Angeles fires different from other California fires?
The Palisades and Eaton fires are not the deadliest – though the fatalities number 28 people so far. (The Camp Fire, which wiped out the mountain town of Paradise in 2018, killed 85 people.) While these two LA fires have burned about 40,000 acres, that destruction pales compared with the million acres burned in other wildfires in the state.
What sets them apart, though, is the scale of destruction in densely populated areas.
“In terms of the human health and environmental impacts, this one is probably above and beyond ... because it’s such an urbanized area, and a lot of people live in the immediate vicinity,” says Dr. Yesiller. This is going to make cleanup particularly time-consuming.
What happens to the waste?
The EPA is removing Phase 1 waste and bringing it to temporary storage areas where the waste is being packaged and prepared for proper removal, said EPA Incident Commander Tara Fitzgerald in a Jan. 22 press conference. She said she did not yet know where the material would be permanently stored. California has hazardous waste landfills, and it also sends such waste to other states.
In the second phase, debris removal “will be heavily controlled,” said Mark Pestrella, director of the LA County Department of Public Works, which is overseeing the cleanup process. He said that local landfills are being told not to accept fire debris of any kind. Instead, that debris will be stockpiled in a safe, approved location, and then sorted for appropriate landfills, he said.
What can people do to protect themselves in these areas?
County health officials urge people not to return to their homes or businesses until after the EPA has removed hazardous waste and caution that ash and debris can be highly contaminated.
If people do return, they recommend wearing N95 masks, goggles, long sleeves, slacks, gloves, and sturdy shoes. Do not bring children or pets, they say. The county is providing masks and, in some places, handing out plastic suits and booties. Health officials advise against stirring up materials and favor cleaning using a wet process – mopping – not leaf blowers. Seal the cleaning materials in a plastic bag, they say.
Wind can also spread ash and soot, even in communities farther away from burned areas. Residents can check local air quality on Airnow.gov, including a fire and smoke map link.
“When the sensors are green, or for most people, yellow, and no obvious ash is floating around, there is no reason to curtail activity,” said Suzanne Paulson, director of the Center for Clean Air at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a statement.
