Dozens of people were unable to get into the town hall Thursday evening in Boyle Heights as demonstrators chanted and held signs outside, sharing their concerns about the cleanup and recovery efforts following the fire at the Lineage Logistics cold food storage warehouse.
Firefighters spent eight days getting the stubborn fire under control after it sparked on June 17. Local emergency declarations were issued at the city, county and state levels. Once the flames were out, a new set of issues arose: air quality, millions of pounds of rotting food, soot and even rats.
Inside the packed community meeting at Stevenson Middle School — which got underway nearly 30 minutes late after demonstrators outside pushed past security and made it into the school’s gym — city officials and Lineage representatives were met with boos and heckles.
“We have issued thousands of boxes of food, grocery carts and hygiene kits,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said. “We have offered cash assistance to impacted households.”
The mayor tried to address the crowd and was interrupted several times. When Jeff Rivera, the executive operations officer for Lineage, took the stage, the crowd chanted and voiced their frustrations.
Many in the crowd said they do not believe what they are being told because they have experienced weeks of miscommunication and misinformation.
“I want to know, for those of you who are representing us, I would like for you to come, sleep where we sleep, so you can experience what we have to go through,” one attendee said.
Despite the sheer amount of food waste and debris to be removed from the Boyle Heights warehouse, Mayor Karen Bass the 45-day deadline is realistic. Karma Dickerson reports for the NBC4 News at 4 p.m. on Thursday, July 9, 2026.
The 85 million pounds of now-rotting food have created an odor that is, at times, unbearable and have brought with them rodents and pests. People who live in the area say they are still concerned about the air quality, despite what they’ve been told by environmental officials.
“I will say that during the metal monitoring that we did both on Wednesday night and Thursday night, we didn’t see any elevated concentration of metals,” Wayne Nastri with the South Coast Air Quality Management District said.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, but Lineage officials have said they believe the fire started while a subcontractor working for Altus Power, which owns the solar array on top of the building, was conducting tests on the panels.