Evacuations were lifted Friday night for people near an ongoing fire that erupted Thursday at one of the world’s largest battery storage plants in the northern half of California.
Video circulating on social media showed smoke and flames erupting from the Moss Landing Power Plant on Thursday night in the Monterey County community of Moss Landing, about 25 miles south of Santa Cruz.
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office said Friday evening that evacuation orders for as many as 1,500 people were lifted, but residents were told to stay indoors in case the fire pollutes the air with toxic gasses.
The Environmental Protection Agency said testing determined the air was not a threat for now, according to a statement from the County of Monterey Department of Emergency Management.
Speaking at an afternoon news conference, Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church and California Assembly Member Dawn Addis expressed their wish to keep the storage facility offline until investigators can determine the cause of the fire.
Addis said it’s been determined that allowing the fire to burn out is the safest way to move forward. A spokesperson for the plant concurred.
The plant is owned by Texas-company Vistra Corp and contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries, which are important for storing electricity from such renewable energy sources as solar energy, but can be extremely difficult to put out if they go up in flames.
Vistra said in a statement in 2021 that the newer, storage side of the plant, which was initially developed in 1950 as a Pacific Gas & Electric fossil fuel based power facility, can handle 400 megawatts or 1,600 megawatt-hours of electricity, which comes from renewable energy and can be released to the California power grid when needed.
Battery storage is crucial to a future that could depend on renewable energy such as solar power, which is drawn from peak daylight hours but needed day and night, rain or shine.
The North County Fire Protection District Fire received a call around 3 p.m. Thursday about the fire at the plant, according to Chief Joel Mendoza, who spoke at a news briefing Friday morning.
“Our first unit on scene arrived and found that there was smoke out of the building and we did find at least one battery on fire,” Mendoza said.
About an hour into the fire, “conditions changed drastically” and a fire suppression system in the facility that has worked well in past incidents was not proving to be helpful.
“In this particular case, that system was not sufficient, it was overridden, and that led to fire overtaking the system and eventually overtaking the entire building,” Mendoza said.
It was then that a mandatory evacuation for the area was issued, and surrounding roadways were closed. Around 1,200 to 1,500 residents were evacuated safely from about 7,600 acres of land, according to Monterey County Communications Director Nick Pasculli, who also spoke at the briefing Friday.
No injuries or deaths have been reported as a result of the fire, Pasculli said.
Mendoza reported that “most of that fire has gone out,” and that there is very little active flame left. The peak of the fire seemed to be between 8 and 10 p.m. Thursday, he added.
Hydrogen fluoride, the primary toxic gas released when lithium batteries burn, was not detected by monitors used to track air quality on the scene, Mendoza said, emphasizing that this is based on a preliminary report.
In an update shared Friday morning, the Santa Cruz County Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience said the fire poses no imminent significant threat and that people can resume normal activities.
“Sensitive groups including those with respiratory difficulties should continue monitoring local air conditions,” the county said in the update posted on X. “While home, we recommend keeping doors and windows closed until further notice, especially residents who live closest to the fire.”
During the briefing, Monterey County District 2 Supervisor Glenn Church described the fire “as a worst case scenario of a disaster” that nobody predicted.
“This is really a lot more than just a fire, it’s really a wake up call for this industry, and if we’re going to be moving ahead with sustainable energy we need to have safe battery systems in place,” Church said.
Church said this is the fourth fire that has happened at this site since 2019, adding that a transition to sustainable energy should not come before safety and the environment.
The cause of the fire is not known at this time, but Church promised accountability.
“There must be accountability for this, and there will be accountability,” he said.
There were fires at the Vistra plant in 2021 and 2022 that were caused by a fire sprinkler system malfunction that resulted in some units overheating, The Associated Press reported.
Vistra Director of Community Affairs Brad Watson apologized on behalf of the company in the news briefing on Friday.
“Our company takes very seriously what happened last night and we are hurting today, because we know primarily its impacted and disrupted the people who live around our site — our neighbors, our friends and businesses.”
Watson said Vistra has arranged for an outside consultant to monitor air quality in the area. He said an investigation of the cause was expected.
North Monterey County Unified School District announced that all schools and offices would be closed Friday due to the fire. California State University Monterey Bay also said classes at its Moss Landing campus were closed until further notice.
