LOS ANGELES (CNS) – Tens of thousands of residents and workers were living or working within the smoke advisory zone established after a warehouse fire in Boyle Heights, with Latino workers making up the vast majority of those affected, according to a rapid-response analysis released Thursday by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute.
The report examined communities within the smoke advisory zone created following the Lineage Logistics warehouse fire, which includes much of Boyle Heights and portions of East Los Angeles. Researchers found that at least 31,700 workers live within the advisory zone, about 26,000 of them — roughly 81% — Latino.
The warehouse fire broke out last week and burned for eight days before firefighters declared a knockdown Wednesday.
Researchers said the fire’s impacts extend beyond air quality concerns, describing it as a workplace disruption and “environmental justice issue” affecting communities that have long faced economic hardship, limited access to health care and disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards.
The report found nearly 13,600 jobs are located within the advisory zone, with about two-thirds held by Latino workers. Nearly nine out of 10 jobs in the area are filled by commuters, meaning the effects of the fire reach thousands of households outside Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles.
According to the analysis, roughly half of resident workers in the advisory zone earn $3,333 per month or less, below Los Angeles County’s very- low-income threshold for a single-person household. More than half also may have limited access to paid leave, health insurance or remote work options.
Researchers said many affected workers are employed in industries requiring in-person work, including health care, retail, food service, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing.
“The smoke zone is also a worker zone,” Arturo Vargas Bustamante, LPPI’s director of faculty research and a co-author of the report, said in a statement. “The impacts do not stop at the neighborhood boundary. Thousands of workers commute into Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles for jobs, which means this emergency reaches families across the region. An equitable response must account for both residents and workers.”
Co-author Julia Silver, a senior research analyst at LPPI, said the fire has compounded longstanding inequities in the affected communities.
“The fire is adding another layer of harm to communities already affected by economic hardship, limited access to health care, and disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards,” Silver said. “There needs to be coordinated relief efforts that reach both residents and workers, including access to health care services, income support, multilingual emergency information, and resources for affected individuals.”
The report is the first in a planned series examining the impacts of the Lineage Logistics warehouse fire. Future analyses will examine the broader geographic reach of the fire, including communities outside the smoke advisory zone that experienced degraded air quality and related disruptions, officials said.
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