Officers reported Saturday that they’re “cautiously optimistic” that the worst has handed following a big hearth that broke out Thursday afternoon, consuming the vast majority of the Vistra storage plant in Moss Touchdown.
About 80% of the plant, and the lithium batteries it housed, had been consumed within the hearth, mentioned Joel Mendoza, chief of the North Monterey County Hearth Division, at a Saturday press convention. The plant, situated throughout from Moss Touchdown Harbor on the location of a former PG&E energy plant, holds tens of 1000’s of lithium batteries. Such battery fires are notoriously troublesome to extinguish, can burn at excessive temperatures and emit poisonous gases that may trigger respiratory issues, pores and skin burns and eye irritation.
As of two p.m. Saturday, the flames had been out and the smoke had died down, however warmth remained contained in the construction. And, as a result of it’s regular for battery fires, particularly, to accentuate once more, first responders continued to maintain U.S. Freeway 1 closed in each instructions between Freeway 183 and Struve Highway, officers mentioned There was no estimated time to reopen Freeway 1.
“The last thing we need is the public getting in the way of emergency services trying to do their job,” mentioned Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto.
Federal officers are monitoring the air high quality along with Vistra’s roaming air high quality monitoring efforts, mentioned Olivia Trombadore, onsite coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Safety Company. The company arrange 9 air high quality displays the primary evening after the fireplace broke out to test for hydrogen fluoride and particulates, two contaminants that may pose well being dangers, in and across the hearth website and evacuation space. Their fashions indicated that hydrogen fluoride, an acidic fuel that’s hazardous to inhale, would have been consumed in a hearth of the scale that occurred, she mentioned.
“We have not seen any levels of these two contaminants that would pose a threat to the public,” she mentioned.
A majority of residents dwelling close to the Vistra storage plant in Moss Touchdown returned house Friday evening, officers mentioned, simply hours after an evacuation order was lifted.
Monterey County spokesperson Nicholas Pasculli mentioned the precise variety of residents who returned are unclear. In a Friday evening replace, the Monterey County Division of Emergency Administration mentioned the air high quality monitoring confirmed “no threat to human health.”
The conflagration raises questions in regards to the security of a expertise — battery storage — that’s thought-about essential for supporting California’s expanded use of photo voltaic and wind vitality in the long run. Up to now years, the state has been more and more reliant on enormous battery storage vegetation to seize electrical energy throughout the daytime and launch it on the grid at evening to scale back the danger of blackouts throughout sizzling summer time months, when demand is excessive.
County Supervisor Glenn Church and Assemblywoman Daybreak Addis known as on Vistra to offer better security assurances to the general public in the case of its roughly $1 billion battery storage facility.
“We need to make sure that when we say to a community, ‘We are working on climate solutions,’ we are not saying ‘We are doing that, but it’s on the back of your health and safety,” Addis mentioned, calling for a full investigation of the fireplace.
“We will put the best technology and the best human minds to work to make sure that we can get the highest probability it won’t happen again,” mentioned Vistra Senior Director of Neighborhood Affairs Brad Watson.
The hearth was reported Thursday afternoon, when alarming plumes of black smoke billowed from one of many world’s largest battery storage vegetation. The occasion closed Freeway 1 and evacuate residents in Northern Monterey County, from areas of Moss Touchdown south of Elkhorn Slough, north of Molera Highway and Monterey Dunes Approach, and west of Castroville Boulevard and Elkhorn Highway to the ocean.
Hearth crews didn’t have interaction with the fireplace, which was contained to the location, however let it burn out by itself. The flames continued to flare by means of Thursday and smoldered into Friday. Evacuation orders had been lifted at about 6 p.m. Friday evening, with officers advising returning residents to remain indoors, restrict outside publicity and switch off their air flow programs.
Monterey officers mentioned Friday that they’d been misled by Vistra, the Texas-based vitality big that constructed the 750-megawatt plant in 2020.
Mendoza mentioned Vistra’s hearth suppression system, which had labored in prior conditions, wasn’t adequate, and the fireplace overtook the system. He added that air high quality displays arrange by officers from the U.S. Environmental Safety Company had not detected hydrogen fluoride fuel, one of many principal hazardous supplies that may come from burning batteries.
A county hotline at 831-769-8700 has additionally been established for residents to name officers with any questions in regards to the air high quality and finest practices for preserving secure, Pasculli mentioned.
Employees writers Paul Rogers and Molly Gibbs contributed to this report.
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