‘We want answers.’ Outcry takes over Boyle Heights fire town hall

"Shame.” "We don't believe you." "Shut it down." “We want answers.”

Demonstrators in protest of the company whose Boyle Heights facility burned for days spilled through the back door of an auditorium in Los Angeles on Thursday, July 9, where Mayor Karen Bass, a Lineage representative and other local officials bore outrage and skepticism from members of a crowd throughout the night.

Community members were invited to a town hall Thursday, where they had the chance to hear directly from city officials and Lineage. The warehousing and logistics company, who said its Boyle Heights facility primarily served as a temperature-controlled storage facility for frozen food, has been under scrutiny after a fire broke out at the building on June 17 in a blaze that emitted dark plumes of smoke for days and elicited concerns about chemicals being released into the air.

In the aftermath of the fire, community members have dealt with a foul odor linked to the warehouse that contained millions of pounds of food that went rotten as Lineage faces calls from local elected officials to provide relocation assistance as well as smoke and toxin remediation.

Less than hour in at the town hall, Bass stepped in to move the programming to Q&A time when it was clear that having official after official provide remarks wasn’t the answer to a restless crowd.

“This is not productive,” Bass said, adding that there were people present who wanted to listen.

Earlier, when she promised she’d fight for a community, a member of the audience shouted, “We don’t believe you.”

Bass said that the goal of the evening was to listen, to learn, to respond and to change.

“I feel that leadership in all levels, from Lineage to city to state, even federal, has failed us,” said Mario Rodriguez, who was one of numerous people with questions for officials at the town hall and told the USA TODAY Network that he lives near the warehouse.

Rodriguez reminded people that elections are coming up in a few months during public comment.

“I’m hoping that my community members are paying attention to what is going on because their vote directly impacts them, and clearly who we put in office this coming November, or we put again in office this coming November, what they do or don’t do will have an impact on us,” Rodriguez said in an interview with the USA TODAY Network.

Person asks whether officials will 'commit to shut down Lineage'

Town hall attendees had numerous questions Thursday about the duration of cleanup efforts, assessments and mitigation of health impacts due to the fire and accountability.

Officials at times attempted to answer questions — one in particular had members of the audience repeatedly expressing interest in getting a response to: “Will the mayor, will the city, commit to shut down Lineage after the clean up?”

A USA TODAY reporter located in the back of the room often found that responses were difficult to hear in full throughout the entire night due to shouts and outcry from audience members.

Moments after Lineage Executive Operations Officer Jeff Rivera began speaking, several members of the crowd stood with their back to him. Shouts from the crowd didn’t cease, with people calling out “liar”— including when he spoke about ammonia, which keeps the building cold, he said.

“Apologize,” a member of the crowd called out multiple times — the Lineage leader had said he was sorry early into his remarks.

Bass said that she learned that many people did not know about this meeting because “our communication has not been strong enough.”

The Los Angeles mayor committed to “multiple layers of environmental investigations, both internal and with independent sciences.”

“I see this as an environmental justice issue, and it raises to me what environmental risk that this community faces and many communities face, especially communities of color,” Bass said.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of warehouses in East L.A. and the San Fernando Valley and in South L.A., and my commitment is to survey each of those facilities to find out what is happening in those facilities,” she said. “Is there any potential harm that could come to the neighborhoods?”

Paris Barraza is a reporter covering Los Angeles and Southern California for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at [email protected].