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Evacuation orders affecting about 1,200 people were lifted Friday afternoon near a burning lithium-ion battery storage facility in Moss Landing, the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office said.
The fire that erupted Thursday afternoon at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility was still generating “a lot of smoke” but appeared to be burning itself out, according to the North County Fire Protection District of Monterey County.
Some roads near the facility, including state Highway 1, remained closed to keep through traffic out of the area, though local residents were granted access, county officials said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was monitoring air quality and data confirmed no threat to human health, according to the Monterey County Emergency Operations Center.
However, in what was described as “an abundance of caution,” Monterey County Health officials advised returning residents to stay indoors, keep windows and doors closed, limit outdoor exposure, and turn off ventilation systems.
The fire occurred inside the power plant located on the south shores of Elkhorn Slough, on a battery storage site touted as the largest of its kind in the world by its operator, Vistra Energy. It was still burning late Friday morning, but only at a small rate compared to the night before, according to Chief Joel Mendoza from the North County Fire Protection District of Monterey County.
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At a Friday news conference attended by county emergency officials, the Board of Supervisors and Vistra company representatives, one supervisor described the event as a “worst case scenario,” but there were no injuries reported.
Initial air quality results from Vistra and the county’s environmental health department suggested that no hazardous gases were released into surrounding communities — an assessment that more sophisticated monitoring equipment from the state and the EPA confirmed, leading to the lifted evacuations.
Battery energy storage systems, referred to by the acronym BESS, store energy from solar, electric, wind, and other energy systems for later use.
When lithium-ion batteries catch fire, they generate extreme heat and can release toxic gases like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, methane, ethane and other hydrocarbons, according to a 2022 county staff report. The same report noted the dangers of runoff from putting out such fires. The facility is at the mouth of Elkhorn Slough, an environmentally sensitive wetland.
‘Conditions changed drastically’
Vistra’s batteries caught fire at about 3 p.m. Thursday, prompting a coordinated emergency response from the county’s Office of Emergency Services as concerns about air quality, hazardous runoff from fire hoses and the fire, along with road closures, required the participation of several county agencies.
Mendoza said about an hour and a half after the fire department responded, “conditions changed drastically,” with the facility’s fire suppression system apparently failing and the fire growing out of control, prompting the evacuations. He said the ongoing response was leaving his department “stretched thin.”
Supervisor Glenn Church, who represents the unincorporated area of the county where the plant is located, called the event a “worst case scenario.”
“This is really a Three Mile Island event for this industry.”
Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church
“This is really a Three Mile Island event for this industry,” said Church, referring to a partial meltdown of a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, considered the worst nuclear disaster in the industry in the United States.
He said regulations in place were clearly not adequate as company officials insisted that the facility met all requirements put upon it by regulators.
Mendoza said the fire was burning at a rate of between 1% and 5% on Friday compared to what it was at its fullest conflagration, which he said was between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Thursday. The fire district was waiting for the flames to die out because of concerns about runoff from hoses.
State Highway 1 was initially closed in the southbound direction at Struve Road and northbound at Molera Road during the incident. Dolan Road was also closed at Russo Road, with drivers being diverted to highways 129 or 183 as alternate routes.
Latest incident at the Moss Landing plant
This marks the fourth incident involving a fire department response at the facility, which is adjacent to another battery storage facility on the same property that is operated by PG&E.
In September 2021, smoke was detected at the Vistra facility, but its fire suppression system stopped the problem, according to the county staff report to the Board of Supervisors in December 2022.
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In February 2022, the facility safety system was again activated for a heating event that was stopped from erupting further.
In September 2022, a fire broke out at the PG&E facility, resulting in a hazardous materials response from the county and a shelter in place order for nearby residents.
Church, who said that nobody predicted this could happen, said the event needed to be a “wake up call for the industry” and said more safety protocols were needed “at every level.”
Bay City News staff writer Pete Young contributed to this story.
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