At a major milestone in Los Angeles fire recovery, authorities said Wednesday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has completed the first phase of debris removal in the burning zones of Altadena and the Pacific Palisades.
According to the EPA, dangerous household items, including propane tanks and lithium-ion batteries, have been removed from about two-thirds of buildings destroyed in the fire. The cleared 9,201 buildings include 4,852 homes in the footprints of the Eton Fire and 4,349 homes in the Palisard Fireburn Zone.
The other 33% of the buildings burned in January, or about 4,400 structures, have been postponed to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for additional cleanup before removing dangerous waste, officials said.
According to the EPA, a record number of people were working to meet the February 25 debris clearance deadline set by the Trump administration after the January shooting. The EPA ended on the 28th for 30 days.
Cherry Peterson, the EPA’s proxy area manager, said 1,700 people, including EPA employees and contractors, California workers and around 200 active members of the military, were working to remove around 300 tons of dangerous household debris.
The crew manually searched dozens of different household waste, including bleach, paint, drain cleaners, pesticides, weed killers, aerosol sprays, and dozens of different household waste, including lithium-ion batteries, propane tanks, ammunition, and asbestos.
“This is the biggest wildfire response that the EPA has ever been involved in,” Peterson said.
The agency was in time for deadlines despite the biggest winter storms, which forced parts of the Pacific Coast Highway to close, prompting mudflows and flash floods in the Eton Fire area.
Milestones are important steps towards reconstruction. This is because crews need to remove dangerous waste before they can bring heavy machinery into the facility to clean up the wreckage.
The EPA opened four staging areas and temporarily stored hazardous waste before shipping to special facilities for disposal. The site urged intense protests from residents who didn’t want waste near homes and protected waterways.
The EPA will close temporary locations in Lario Park in Irwindale and Beach, Wil Rogers, Malibu, within three weeks, Peterson said. She said the agency should conduct final soil testing on both sites to “make sure there is absolutely nothing.”
Peterson said the disposal sites for the Altadena Golf Course on the Pacific Coast Highway and the former Topanga Ranch Motel on the Pacific Coast Highway remain open to organize, store and ship waste found during Army clearance.
The remaining 4,400 or so properties not cleared by the EPA have largely structural issues and are not safe for crews to search for dangerous waste by hand, Colonel Eric Swenson said.
He said some houses have deep basements that are inaccessible due to the burning of stairs, while others have walls that are still standing but at risk of collapse. He said the Army will use heavy equipment to remove walls and other dangers where they bowed before they begin searching for dangerous household items.
The Army will use the same process as the EPA to find and remove hazardous waste, Swenson said. The crew will pick up the items by hand, put them in airtight containers and drop them down to the EPA processing site, he said. The lithium-ion batteries will be picked up by the EPA, he said.
Residents can use the EPA’s interactive map to check the status of their property.
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