Fire at one of the world's largest battery plants in California forces evacuations
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Hundreds of people were ordered to evacuate and part of Highway 1 in Northern California was closed early Friday after a major fire erupted at one of the world's largest battery storage plants. The fire started Thursday afternoon and sent up towering flames and black smoke, and about 1,500 people were instructed to leave Moss Landing and the Elkhorn Slough area, The Mercury News reported.
The blaze was still burning early Friday with some containment and it had not gone beyond the facility, according to Monterey County spokesperson Nicholas Pasculli. As of late Thursday, a few dozen people were at a temporary evacuation center and the rest had gone to friends or family or made other arrangements, Pasculli said.
The Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles (about 124 kilometers) south of San Francisco, is owned by Texas-based company Vistra Energy and contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries. The batteries are important for storing electricity from such renewable energy sources as solar energy, but if they go up in flames the blazes can be extremely difficult to put out.
“There’s no way to sugar coat it. This is a disaster, is what it is,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSBW-TV. But he said he did not expect the fire to spread beyond the concrete building it was enclosed in. The county Board of Supervisors planned an emergency meeting Friday morning to receive a briefing on the fire.
