Rotting meat, foul smell at site of Boyle Heights warehouse fire
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Set us as preferred The fire may be out, but Boyle Heights is now dealing with massive amounts of rotting meat and a foul smell as the cleanup phase from a weeklong fire at a massive cold-storage warehouse begins.Outside the Lineage warehouse Thursday morning, the smell of heavy smoke was already being replaced with that of spoiling food and filthy water.Thick foam from the building’s insulation floated by on streams that leaked from the hulking shell, which firefighters have been drenching for days since the fire erupted on the roof the afternoon of June 17.Three dump trucks carried waste away, but firefighters said it would still be days before crews would be able to access the remains of the burned-out interior.Wendy Ramirez, 45, and her father-in-law, Jaime Ramirez, 69, fled the area when they could no longer bear the heavy smoke last week.
They returned Thursday to check on their house and were greeted by the stench.“Now you can smell the rotting food,” Wendy Ramirez said.Her two children have asthma, and she stayed with relatives during the fire.In the first days after the fire, officials raised concerns that the unrefrigerated food might become so rancid as to create a biohazard risk.
But the temperature was eventually stabilized and the threat eliminated.But lesser risks related to the growing stench persist.Jaime Ramirez, who went to his daughter’s house in West Covina, brought a mask in case fire remained, but said he instead needed it for the smell.He and other neighbors worried the rancid food might draw rats and pose a further hazard to residents like him, who have not yet found it safe to come back home.
The third day of the fire, he woke up with a runny nose, sore throat and chapped lips, he said.California Bass, who is running for reelection, said in an interview that she rarely travels and always wo...