Another fire broke out at one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery storage facilities in California.
Residents living near the Vistra Moss Landing Power Plant and Energy Storage Facility were told Tuesday night to close their windows and doors after “light smoke and fire” were seen at the facility, an emergency alert from county officials said.
“Public Safety Agencies are in Unified Command due to light smoke and fire at the Vistra Battery Facility in Moss Landing. Unified Command continues to monitor the situation and community air particulate matter and metals monitoring are ongoing,” the alert from Monterey County officials said. “Out of an abundance of caution, safety agencies urge residents to close windows and doors overnight.”
An earlier message from the county said the fire was first detected around 6:30 p.m., but residents weren’t told this until after 8:30, according to CBS News. The fire started in the burned-out area where a previous fire broke out on January 16, but the message said the new fire didn’t appear to be burning undamaged batteries.
“The Jan. 16 fire grew out of control when the facility’s internal fire suppression system failed,” CBS reported.
The fire burned for several days, NBC Bay Area reported, and noted the increase in toxic metals related to baseline measurements that had been conducted prior to the blaze. Initially, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under then-President Joe Biden, along with local authorities, claimed the fire at the energy storage facility released no toxins.
High levels of nickel, manganese, and cobalt were found in the soil within 2 miles of the facility, The Daily Wire previously reported, according to measurements taken by scientists at San Jose State University.
Dr. Ivano Aiello, the chair of San José State’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, told KQED that his lab tested soil within two miles of the Elkhorn Slough nature preserve and found that samples from around 100 locations showed concentrations of three toxic heavy metals hundreds of times higher than before the fire. He noted that the fire caused the increase in findings because the heavy metals were only found in the top layer of soil, suggesting they were recent.
“They are clearly the type of material from a battery, so you can link directly the occurrence increasing of this toxic heavy metal to the source, which is a battery,” he told the outlet. “The line of evidence from a scientific perspective is pretty solid. There’s no other explanation as to why before the concentrations were much lower and now are much higher, and those elements are linked to those nanoparticles.”
Earlier this month, residents near the facility filed a lawsuit against Vistra Energy and PG&E, the companies that own the two facilities at the Moss Landing site. The lawsuit alleges that Vistra failed to take proper safety measures and PG&E designed an unsafe facility.
