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Shortly after a massive fire under the Interstate 10 freeway in downtown Los Angeles last weekend closed a 1-mile stretch normally traversed by 300,000 vehicles daily, California’s fire marshal announced that it was being investigated as possible arson.
Some locals have been eager to blame the homeless encampments that are common under California's freeway overpasses, despite LA mayor Karen Bass saying this week that “there is no reason to assume that the reason this fire happened was because there were unhoused individuals nearby.”
Now there’s evidence that excess pandemic hand sanitizer may have contributed to the blaze. The Los Angeles Times reported this week that unnamed sources said that hand sanitizer, which is highly flammable, stored under the freeway may have worsened the I-10 destruction. The owner of a company subleasing storage space under the overpass tells WIRED he was storing half a pallet of hand sanitizer that had been left unsold after pandemic restrictions lifted.
If hand sanitizer is confirmed to have contributed to the I-10 disaster, it could be added to a growing list of tragic fires fueled by surplus sanitizer from the pandemic.
California authorities have so far released little information about the cause of the fire, citing the ongoing investigation. They have said that the space under the freeway was leased out by California’s transportation department to an entity that Governor Gavin Newsom called a “bad actor,” and who allowed many items to be stored under the overpass.
An attorney for Calabasas-based Apex Development sent out a news release Wednesday night objecting to being called a “bad actor.” In September, the state had filed a lawsuit alleging that Apex had stopped paying rent for the past year while subleasing the property out to at least five other businesses. Google Street View imagery of the stretch that burned shows plenty of boxes and wooden pallets under the freeway, leaving little room for any large encampments.
Apex Development’s CEO Anthony Nowaid has not yet returned messages from WIRED. The news release that Apex Development’s attorney sent out Wednesday night blames the fire on “public safety issues caused by the unhoused.”
Rudy Serafin, who owns one of the businesses that had been subleasing the space, tells WIRED that he did not notice any homeless people near the site the day before the fire, other than some cars parked along one street that he assumed belonged to people living in them. Serafin said he was using his lot to store the hand sanitizer he had been unable to sell after demand for it during the pandemic dropped. He estimates that he had between 100 and 125 bottles under the overpass.
That could make the I-10 blaze complicating LA traffic this week the third fire in the area involving leftover hand sanitizer. A different pallet yard storing sanitizer erupted in flames in downtown Los Angeles in January. And in 2021, a notoriously noxious smell plaguing the LA County town of Carson was linked by officials to a massive fire at a lot storing thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer.
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As WIRED reported in June, the US Food and Drug Administration lifted regulations on hand sanitizer during the height of the Covid-19 crisis, putting faith in the free market to solve a hand sanitizer shortage. It soon became clear that faith was misplaced.
After production jumped, the US quickly had more hand sanitizer than anyone knew what to do with, and much of it turned out to be toxic because of poor manufacturing practices. Over the past few years, unsellable hand sanitizer has been accumulating at sites across the nation. And industrial fires involving large amounts of hand sanitizer have been reported at multiple sites in Texas, Oklahoma, and Illinois.
Hand sanitizer is highly flammable and regulations say it should be treated as hazardous waste. But some in the chemical distribution industry had complained that properly disposing of hand sanitizer was too expensive. One Oklahoma fire was also investigated as arson.
Serafin says that he was not a major distributor of hand sanitizer, just someone trying to support his family during the pandemic selling products such as masks, cleaning fluid, and sanitizer to local businesses. He said his landlord Apex Development had charged him $4,500 a month during the time it was allegedly holding out on rent payments to the California Department of Transportation.
Serafin said he and other sublessees stopped paying rent to Apex when they learned of their landlord’s litigation with the state but resumed paying after its CEO, Nowaid, became aggressive and locked them out of the property.
“At the end of the day, my business is screwed, my livelihood is gone, and all I can do is work,” Serafin said of his current situation. He said he had been renting there since 2009 and that the Department of Transportation was aware of the crowded conditions under the freeway. In addition to the hand sanitizer, Serafin said that there were also forklifts, cardboard, gas canisters, and trucks under the overpass. Apex’s contract with Caltrans stated that flammable or hazardous materials were not supposed to be stored there. Serafin says he's confident his sanitizer did not start the fire.
“My hand sanitizers did not start it. I could tell you where it was. It was literally in the middle of my shop,” he said, referring to the space he rented under the overpass. “How would it get started right there? It wouldn't.”
