Monterey County Battery Fire Briefly Flares Up Weeks After Massive Blaze

Updated 1:56 p.m. Wednesday

A fire that flared up Tuesday night at the Monterey County energy storage facility that burned in January is under control, county officials said Wednesday afternoon. Still, the reignition renewed fears about the environmental and health effects of both blazes, and other flare-ups that could still be coming.

North County Fire Chief Joel Mendoza said that fire crews and the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office responded Tuesday evening to reports of light smoke coming from a building at the Vistra Energy Storage Facility that burned in last month’s massive fire in Moss Landing. By later that night, it had intensified and turned into flames.

The fire started under a pile of rubble in a section of the facility that had previously burned. There haven’t been any sustained periods of poor air quality or indications of danger to the public, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency coordinator Eric Sandusky said, but officials advised residents to close windows and doors Tuesday night.

Mendoza said the fire burned at “different intensities” throughout the night and burned out around 8 a.m. Wednesday.

More than 70% of the Vistra site, including some of the 100,000 lithium-ion batteries it uses to store energy, burned in the original fire, which scientists said could have dangerous health and environmental impacts.

Thousands of people joined a Facebook group to discuss symptoms like nausea, headaches and sore throats that they developed in the days after the fire started.

Four people are suing Texas-based Vistra Corp. over the release of toxic chemicals, saying the company should have known the risks of operating such a facility and failed to take safety measures to prevent or contain the fire.

The suit also criticizes the use of indoor storage for some of the batteries and the site’s allegedly faulty and inadequate heat-suppression system. In addition, it names PG&E, which draws power from the energy storage facility, and LG Energy Solution, which installed the batteries.

Scientists at San José State University also later found heightened levels of dangerous heavy metals in the nearby Elkhorn Slough. In some parts of the sensitive ecosystem’s soil, nanoparticles of manganese, cobalt and nickel were detected at levels 1,000 times greater than before the fire.

County agencies formed a unified command to respond to the reignited fire Tuesday night and monitor the situation. Heavy metal and air quality monitoring are ongoing, but county environmental health chief Ric Encarnacion said that it appears to be safe for people living near the site to proceed with normal activities. If they smell smoke or are concerned, they should continue to take precautions like closing windows and wearing masks outdoors, he added.

Mendoza said fire crews will remain on-site through Wednesday night to monitor the area where the flare-up occurred.

Because batteries were damaged in January’s fire, and Monterey County has been hit by recent storms, rekindlings like this are “very common,” Sandusky said.

“During the fire, you don’t get a complete burn of the battery, so there’s still some batteries in there that are damaged. And then, when water impacts the electrolytes or the electrodes in the batteries, that short-circuits and catches fire,” he said during a press conference Wednesday. “The goal here is to mitigate the possibility of a large fire and keep the fires as small as possible because unfortunately, during a lithium battery event, the rekindling is very, very likely — [it] is almost a certainty that it will happen at some point.”