Quick Take:
Firefighters were allowing the Moss Landing fire to burn itself out, as Monterey County officials lifted evacuation orders for nearby neighborhoods Friday afternoon. Highway 1 remains closed indefinitely in area around the power plant and battery storage facility.
Editor’s note: This article was updated at 6:45 p.m. Friday with additional information on evacuation orders and road closures.
Firefighters were allowing a large blaze at a power plant and battery storage facility in Moss Landing to burn itself out, as Monterey County officials lifted evacuation orders for nearby neighborhoods Friday afternoon. Highway 1 remained closed indefinitely in area around the power plant.
In neighboring Santa Cruz County, health officials on Friday morning canceled a warning for residents to remain indoors, saying in an alert that there was “no imminent significant threat” from the fire. Those with medical conditions such as respiratory problems should continue to monitor air quality, and residents living close to the fire should continue to keep doors and windows closed, the county said.
North Monterey County Fire Chief Joel Mendoza told a 10 a.m. virtual media briefing that the fire had largely died down. On a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being the fire at its peak, the blaze was “in the vicinity of 1% to 5%,” he said.
Mendoza added that preliminary monitoring by the plant’s Texas-based owners, Vistra Corp., and the Environmental Protection Agency showed that there was no hydrogen fluoride gas detected in the area. Hydrogen fluoride gas is a highly toxic gas that can be emitted from lithium battery fires.
He reiterated that there were no injuries to any civilians, plant personnel or any first responders. Road closures, including both directions of Highway 1 and nearby Dolan Road, remained in effect as of 12:30 p.m. Friday.
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office issued evacuation orders shortly after 6:30 p.m. Thursday for several areas south of Elkhorn Slough, and California Highway Patrol closed a stretch of Highway 1 around the Vistra Moss Landing Power Plant. Caltrans said late Friday that “there is no estimated time” to reopen the highway, which is shut down in both directions between Potrero Road and Struve Road.
Kelsey Scanlon, Monterey County’s director of emergency management, said the county has declared a local emergency and was operating its emergency operations center in Salinas at “Level 2,” which means a moderate level of staffing.
Schools in Pajaro Valley Unified School District remained open Friday. District officials said in a social media thaty they were monitoring the local air quality.
Investigating the cause of the blaze
The fire broke out Thursday afternoon in a 300-megawatt battery storage facility. The company safely evacuated all employees from the building.
Brad Watson, senior director of community affairs at Vistra, told a Friday morning news conference that the company is taking the incident very seriously and that safety is its top priority. Vistra Regional Vice President Pete Ziegler said the company would share further information about the incident as it becomes available.
“We don’t know the root cause of this yet. Obviously it’s less than 24 hours old, so once we have that, we can make adjustments based on those findings,” said Ziegler.
There is a fire suppression system connected to each battery rack, fire chief Medoza told the morning media conference. While it has worked correctly in the past, it did not this time. Why the system did not work has not yet been determined.
California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, whose 29th District includes communities around the power plant along with a swath of southern Santa Cruz County, said in a statement that he was closely watching the situation. “The Moss Landing battery plant fire is a catastrophe and I expect accountability,” he wrote.
Safety questions
Thursday’s fire is the latest blaze at the Moss Landing site, a 75-year-old gas-fired power plant that is also one of the world’s largest battery storage facilities. A plan to build a similar project near Watsonville — a 200-megawatt battery storage facility — is expected to go before the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors later this year.
In September 2022, a Tesla Megapack battery caught fire at the Moss Landing plant, prompting a shelter-in-place order and road closures that lasted nearly a day. A year earlier, the plant was the subject of an emergency shutdown when some of its battery modules overheated.
The natural gas power plant dates back to 1950. Vistra has added a lithium-ion battery storage facility in 2020 and announced expansions of its battery storage in 2021 and 2023. The project was touted as a major step forward in California’s clean-energy ambitions. The plant operates under an agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric to store excess solar power during the day to be released when energy demand peaks.
District 2 Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church, whose district includes the power plant, called the incident a “worst-case scenario of a disaster,” and a wake-up call for the industry.
“If we’re going to be moving ahead with sustainable energy, we need to have a safe battery systems in place,” he said. “There must be accountability for this, and there will be accountability.”
Church said he was personally assured this would not happen, which highlights uncertainties around the highly flammable lithium-ion technology. He called for an independent investigation into the blaze to figure out exactly what happened.
“If renewable energy is going to be the future, it really needs to be safe energy,” he said. “I’m not going to rest and leave this until I know that we have a safe operation in the Moss Landing area.”
Assemblymember Dawn Addis, whose 30th District stretches from Santa Cruz County through Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties, said in a statement Thursday night that she was “closely monitoring” the blaze and that she had “serious questions about the safety of this battery energy storage plant.”
“I will be looking for transparency and accountability for why this happened again at Moss Landing,” Addis wrote. “I am exploring all options for preventing future battery energy storage fires from ever occurring again on the Central Coast.”
Vistra’s Watson said he had presented a plume modeling report illustrating a worst-case scenario to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors in December 2022, but when asked if he could provide the full report, said he needed to “look into where it is, where we have it, and if it’s something that we can provide.”
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