2025-02-07
49 分钟The Economist. Right now I'm standing in Altadena with some contractors and some folks from the Environmental Protection Agency watching them do hazardous waste removal.
Aaron Braun is The Economist's West Coast correspondent.
She's been to one of the neighborhoods ravaged by the L.A. fires to see the recovery process.
So they were honestly digging through with their hands and with shovels.
One of the lots here to see if there's anything that might explode that's hazardous,
pesticides, paint cans, lithium batteries, that kind of thing.
I'm Harry Allen.
I'm an EPA on-scene coordinator.
What are the risks there with the batteries?
Yeah, so if you have a fire that's... partially consumes a lithium-ion battery array,
whether it's in a tool or a toy or an EV, those batteries can react without warning.
And when they react, they heat up and they start to expand.
The top pops off and then there's a jet fire.
So like a little Roman candle.
And if you've got thousands of these, you've got thousands of jet fires.
The lot that I'm at right now,
the only thing that's still standing is part of the chimney.
And that's something that's been really characteristic of these fires where I'm looking around the neighborhood right now and you can just see chimney,
chimney, chimney, and everything below it is just rubble.
So hazardous waste removal is the first phase of cleanup for these fires.