More than 13,000 residential and 250 commercial structures in the Los Angeles area were affected by the Palisades Fire and Eaton Fire, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Officials are now kicking off the largest cleanup of hazardous material from a wildfire in agency history.
The agency announced on Monday that it has deployed 1,050 response personnel into the area, up from the 478 personnel in the field last week. The EPA also announced it has begun assembling 60 teams to clear hazardous materials from the remaining properties, all at no cost to residents.
“We’re not going to wait days or weeks or months to ramp up,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a press release. “We have over a thousand personnel on the ground to aid Californians, and our local, state, and federal partners, in Los Angeles’s recovery. The Trump administration is tackling this head-on in a way that EPA couldn’t possibly be prouder to be a part of.”
EPA said its first priority is removing lithium-ion batteries in the area affected by the wildfire and properly disposing of them. Many homes in the burned areas had energy storage systems and/or electric hybrid vehicles, and the agency has reportedly removed 80 of them burned or destroyed in the fire.
“Residents returning home are encouraged to exercise extreme caution and can call our hotline at 1-833-798-7372 if they encounter a lithium-ion battery while re-entering their property and/or are unsure if a lithium-ion battery was damaged,” the EPA said.
The agency, in the cleanup’s second phase, will remove debris in the fires’ burn footprints so the material isn’t released into the environment. Phase 2 will primarily be conducted by FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The material that will be removed includes:
- Paints
- Cleaning supplies
- Automotive oils
- Garden products such as herbicides and pesticides
- Batteries
- Propane tanks and other pressurized gas containers
