At first we thought it was just another fire here in Flameytown, but after burning for over a week the real horror has just begun. The massive inferno at a refrigerated warehouse in LA’s Boyle Heights is now extinguished… and all that remains is some sixty-five MILLION pounds of rotting meat, a small ocean of runoff water and temperatures climbing into the nineties. Already the surrounding area stinks of death and things are likely to get much, much worse.
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I was an EMT for a private service. We had one “box truck,“ a rig with a truck frame instead of a modified van. It had picked up a very ripe corpse some three years before I joined that company. It *still* smelled awful all that time later.
One. Body.
I usually recommend putting lavender oil on your philtrum to mask smells. I hear Vicks Vapo Rub works, too. but the smell of 65 million pounds of rotting food? I don’t think lavender or Vicks will help. The county I grew up in was the pork-producing capital of the state (an no, I am not sure why the county was proud of that), and pig farms are the worse-smelling farms–but still not as bad as this burned-out warehouse is or will be. I think incinerating the food or dumping it in the ocean is the best choices. With the formal,… Read more »
I’m from the South. One of the biggest shocks of my life was seeing a boned salmon “graveyard” in Homer, Alaska. It was next to a controlled tidal fishing area. It didn’t smell! No bugs! No rats! I take that back, there were countless Bald Eagles, Alaska’s version of rats. Dump it in the Bering Sea and the crab population may skyrocket, but disease would be way less as would the smell.
‘Cause it’s cold.
Soooo glad I left LA (Long Beach is south of Boyle Heights). I’d rather be downwind of a sriracha plant. The nauseating smell has got to be way past “gag me”. Imagine trillions of maggots & flies? Robins, starlings, crows, and chickens will feast on maggots – good? Frogs, toads, lizards, dragonflies, wasps and snakes will feed on them (what feeds on them?). Rats, squirrels, mice, shrews, and bats (like from Wuhan labs) also feed on larvae and carry diseases – extremely bad. Sounds like 10 plagues (and lockdowns?) may again be returning to LA – well deserved. Wake me… Read more »
My family’s small party store had a crawl space under the store. A possum died under there and it stunk up the store and we had to crawl under there to remove it. One possum. 65M pounds of stinking meat? OMG!
The headline dated June 21 that I read stated 85 million pounds of meat, fish and wheat products. Regardless, it’s going to cost much to recover.
Who owns the Warehouse? Which company stored the meat there? Why is so much meat stored in one location?
I’d like to suggest an alternative solution. The port of LA.
Load those containers into cargo ships, motor them offshore, ventilate and dump. Use shaped charges to blow holes in the containers to let them sink and also to allow marine life access to the contents.
There is a deep water canyon west of Isla Cedros off of central Baja. That’s your target. The boon to local sea life should ensure bountiful fishing harvests for YEARS!!
Your ocean dump is my favorite idea, though probably the best option would have been Scott’s “let it burn!” But of course, it’s too late for that. The fire is out, So ocean dump would have been a good second option. Naturally, these gubmint geniuses choose the worst option. They are spreading the stink around, hauling the stuff “to multiple landfills in Los Angeles, Ventura and Riverside counties.” I can’t understand why anyone would want to live in California. Actually, I can. It’s very beautiful, and the climate is great (though personally, I prefer a place with weather.) But seriously,… Read more »
The problem with “let it burn” is not the meat but all the man made materials that went into constructing the building. The toxic smoke from those materials would be far worse that just letting it rot. I like the “drop it in the ocean” idea. That or leave it out in the desert where the condors can find it.
Thought the same thing. Ocean is not too far.
And remember, there are and always have been giant whale “die-offs”, handled easily by the food chain. This “die-off” is just ten-thousand times bigger.
Sometimes the worst outcome is better..
Is the car on fire? Let it burn [there’s no overcoming the minute but critical damage]
Is the boat sinking? [there’s no way to mitigate a partial flood] Let it sink
Is the meat warehouse afire? Let it burn. For days if necessary. When it’s a mass of carbon, let me know.
Not too far from me (but more than far enough the smell isn’t a concept of a factor) there is an egg farm that has had to kill their flock twice in the last couple of years for suspected bird flu. The town that is nearby has residents that have complained about the smell. According to a family friend that works there, our state has some regulations on what they have to do with the birds, so there isn’t anything they can do to lessen the smell either.
I serve on a City Commission tasked with Odor Control. Turns out that the approved “smell measurer” is so desensitized that only an East Palestine OH event will trigger the response that requires City action. If you can smell it and still breathe, it’s no big deal. sheesh.