The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it has initiated its “largest wildfire hazardous waste cleanup” in agency history.
“EPA has completed reconnaissance at 6,022 properties,” a press release on the cleanup says. “This includes 3,636 properties impacted by the Eaton Fire and 2,386 properties impacted by the Palisades Fire.” According to the statement, 80 electric vehicles were removed.
More than 1,000 response personnel are involved in the cleanup, a drastic increase from the 478 personnel involved last week.
Sixty teams have been organized to clear hazardous materials from the more than 13,000 residential properties. The EPA is also clearing materials from 250 commercial properties.
According to the release, the EPA will remove “potentially dangerous everyday products including household products like paints, cleaning supplies, and automotive oils, garden products such as herbicides and pesticides, batteries, including both standard and rechargeable types, and propane tanks and other pressurized gas containers.” The EPA will further remove lithium-ion batteries as they can “spontaneously re-ignite, explode, and emit toxic gases and particulates even after the fire is out.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said of the effort, “EPA is undertaking the largest wildfire cleanup in the history of the agency. We’re not going to wait days or weeks or months to ramp up. We have over a thousand personnel on the ground to aid Californians, and our local, state, and federal partners, in Los Angeles’s recovery. The Trump administration is tackling this head on in a way that EPA couldn’t possibly be prouder to be a part of.”
The cleanup effort follows President Donald Trump signing an executive order to provide water to California and improve the disaster response in the aftermath of devastating fires.
Under the order, the EPA is to work alongside the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to execute the plan of waste removal.