Forget the deadline. The bugs are already here.
Residents living around the burned-out Lineage Logistics warehouse in Boyle Heights say they are being left to stew in the stench of millions of pounds of rotting food, deal with a surge of pests and wonder what chemicals may have been released, while the multibillion-dollar company says it needs more time to clean up its mess.
Lineage was supposed to clear the food waste from the warehouse by 5 p.m. Friday under a deadline set by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
It won’t.
The company now says it expects to finish removing all the food by Aug. 27, arguing that it is only 37 days into a 45-day cleanup period. Lineage said Wednesday that 93% of the bulk food waste is already gone.
That math may satisfy the company. It isn’t doing much for the people living next door.
“I’ve got flies the size of Subarus at my house. Never seen these before in 25 years,” one person who lives nearby wrote online.
At a Thursday night community meeting, residents made clear they aren’t interested in another promise to call a hotline or wait a little longer.
“Our soil, our air, our water, everything has been contaminated,” one resident said.
Boyle Heights resident Laura Garza accused Lineage representatives of selectively answering questions while residents are left without basic information about their own safety.
“They picked and chose what questions they were going to answer. And then, it was the same answer. You can call these phone numbers,” Garza told ABC 7.
Then came the question that cuts straight to the heart of residents’ anger:
“Lineage has a number you can call if you want an air conditioner. But what’s the number you call if you want to know what chemicals you were exposed to, and why they haven’t cleaned it up yet?”
Lineage says it has about 400 workers a day tackling the cleanup and is spending roughly $100 million on the effort.
But Bass says a company with billions of dollars in resources should have been able to meet the city’s deadline.
“Lineage is a multibillion-dollar company with the resources to meet the 45-day deadline I set,” Bass said in a statement. “They have indicated that they will not meet it [Friday]. Meanwhile, the people of Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles continue to live with the consequences. Families are still dealing with horrific odors and the constant uncertainty of when this nightmare will end.”
Councilmember Ysabel Jurado was equally scathing, accusing Lineage of waiting until the last possible moment to dispute the deadline.
“For weeks, the City has publicly told Boyle Heights, the media, and anyone that would listen that August 14 was the deadline for Lineage to remove the food waste from this facility,” Jurado said in a statement. “If Lineage believed that deadline was wrong, it had weeks to say so publicly. Waiting until the eve of the deadline to announce a different interpretation of the calendar is not accountability.”
Residents say the burned warehouse has become a magnet for pests and vermin, with the rotting food adding to the misery surrounding the site.
They also say they are dealing with pollution left behind by the fire and getting few answers about possible health and safety risks.
Bass has now signaled that the city is prepared to escalate.
She said Lineage has failed its responsibility to the community and urged the City Council to pursue civil litigation and all legal avenues to recover costs.
“That is unacceptable,” Bass wrote in a post to X. “I will use every resource at my disposal to demand compliance and hold Lineage accountable for every day that Boyle Heights residents are forced to breathe putrid air and deal with the flies and rats, because of the company’s negligence.”
She also took executive action to pause processing of the company’s plans to rebuild.
Lineage says the food will be gone by Aug. 27.
