When Ethan Salter got home from a recording session last Wednesday, he thought the warehouse fire that started burning that day a mere block from his Boyle Heights home was already out.

He couldn’t really smell anything and didn’t see much ash.

“It seemed totally fine,” he said of the first day of the fire.

But, the next morning, the 23-year-old musician felt “awful.”

“My lungs felt heavy, my chest was just closing up,” Salter said. It was then he decided he needed to leave his Los Angeles neighborhood.

“My immediate instinct was ‘I’m going to pack everything and get out of here as soon as I can, because this is very dangerous,’” he recalled.

The Boyle Heights community has been left reeling since the persistent blaze at the privately owned cold-storage warehouse broke out June 17, sending smoke throughout the Southland and residents seeking refuge indoors as efforts continue to extinguish it.

In a Monday press briefing, Derek Chapman, deputy fire chief with the Los Angeles Fire Department, said he expects the department “will continue to make progress on this fire and get to its conclusion in the next few days.”

In the meantime, residents of the Los Angeles neighborhood have complained of respiratory symptoms, and local businesses have tried to push on while feeling the economic impact spurred by the haze that has become a daily — and anxiety-inducing — occurrence.

Salter has been couch-surfing ever since, staying with friends in nearby neighborhoods, until heading to his parents’ home in Long Beach, about 22 miles away.

“I have to go back up to LA, because my whole entire life is out there, and my work and everything that I do with music is up there,” he said. “I don’t even know where I’m staying tonight, to be honest, but that’s another thing that’s just been stressing me out, but I’m going to have to figure it out.”

He uses his loft as a rehearsal space for his alt-pop band, SALTER, and is now scrambling to find a place to practice ahead of a show he helped organize through his promotion company.

“It’s been really hard,” Salter said.

Worried resident suffers headaches for days

Christina Ayala, 58, has had a rough couple of days.

She and her family take up the two homes in a duplex right behind the fire. Since it started, she has experienced intense headaches, dizziness and nausea so bad she doesn’t want to eat.

She has been staying indoors, except to go to work at Disneyland, though she missed a couple of days due to the fire.

Despite sheltering in place, the smoke feels like it’s inside her home.

“I can feel it in the morning, the smoke all in my room,” Ayala said.

She finally booked an appointment to see a doctor almost a week after the blaze started.

“It’s affecting our lives,” she said.

Her grandchildren are home on summer break and the youngest, a 3-year-old boy, doesn’t understand why he has to wear a mask and can’t play outside.

Ayala, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 50 years, remembers when the same warehouse caught fire two years ago. “But this time, it’s 10 times worse,” she said.

“Our concern is what’s in the air? What’s going to happen to us? Are we going to have consequences after?” Ayala thinks out loud. “We don’t have another place to go. We have dogs, cats, our whole family is here.”

A previous smoke advisory issued by the South Coast Air Quality Management District for a large swath of Southern California has since expired, and on Monday, air quality readings were within safe limits.

However, a particle pollution advisory was extended until Wednesday, according to the district, adding that the smoke from the fire is impacting air quality.

A frustrated father of three

A shelter for those displaced by the fire is about a 10-minute drive away from the actual blaze.

Outside on Tuesday, the sky was blue while people were running and walking their dogs maskless.

Others, worried about air quality, visited the shelter hoping for air purifiers, but instead left with masks and other supplies.

Manuel Perez is concerned about his three school-aged children now that they’re home on summer break.

The Boyle Heights resident lives about a mile-and-a-half from the fire and hasn’t opened his windows in days.

The smoke is so pervasive, he can’t even take his kids to parks in neighboring cities like Montebello and Alhambra. “It’s the same there,” he told CNN in Spanish.

He wanted to buy an air purifier, but noticed one cost $300 and decided to try getting one through the city — but had no luck there, either.

“I am a bit frustrated,” he said.

He gets some rest when there’s a reprieve from the smoke, but it’s often uncomfortable and has left his daughter’s throat hurting, Perez said.

County officials on Tuesday said they have distributed over 10,000 masks and 2,300 air purifiers to East Los Angeles residents in the impacted area.

A concerned caretaker

Juana Quintero and her caregiver, Martha Barrera, walked through the park on their way to the grocery store on Tuesday.

Quintero, who has asthma, hadn’t left her home in days, worried about the smoke. And when she has left her home, she is always wearing a face mask.

Barrera hasn’t turned on Quintero’s air conditioner for fear of contaminating the house. Instead, she has opted for a fan.

Barrera, who lives in East Los Angeles, has also felt the effects of the smoke.

“You breathe in and you just smell burning,” she said in Spanish.

She also hasn’t ventured often from her house, but had to go to Los Angeles International Airport over the weekend and saw the thick cloud of smoke on her way back.

The next day she woke up with a cough.

Businesses feel the strain

While the blue sky was clear outside the shelter, it turned white, thick with smoke near the fire.

At nearby Sakura Hana Hibachi on Tuesday, only a child sat watching on an iPad while a TV played World Cup highlights. Mexican Norteño music was blasting on a speaker.

“My eyes burn and my head hurts,” a cook yelled in Spanish from the kitchen.

“The fire has affected business,” Alberto, the manager who did not want to give his last name, said in Spanish over the phone. “Less people are coming in because of the street closures.”

At Mariscos y Antojitos El Peque, manager Juan Campos has been feeling under the weather. Walking into the restaurant is a reprieve from the smell of smoke outside.

“I had to leave one day because I couldn’t stand my headache,” Campos said in Spanish, adding that his throat hurts and he has had dizzy spells.

“That day, customers just left,” Campos added.

“It’s already slow, and now this?” Campos said as he sat in a booth with one of three customers inside. “Many people are too scared to go outside.”

What officials have said about the ongoing disaster

The fire has been raging for a week inside the warehouse that the company Lineage — described on its website as a “worldwide leader in cold storage and logistics” — told CNN it does not own. The company says it also does not own the solar array on the warehouse’s roof, where the company says it believes the inferno originated.

Instead, the company says it is “the tenant-operator of the warehouse building and lease(s) the roof to a third-party solar company, which is responsible for operating and maintaining the array.” The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

The blaze was largely under control within six hours, but wind conditions last Friday caused a flare-up, according to the LAFD.

The next day, Mayor Karen Bass declared an emergency to ensure the city gets the resources it needs to fight the blaze and help residents. California Gov. Gavin Newsom also declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles.

The LAFD has said the situation “remains a complex, long-duration incident that will require sustained operations.”

A Lineage facility in Washington state also caught fire and smoldered for two months in 2024, Northwest Public Broadcasting reported. Nearby residents in that blaze reported having health problems.

When will it be safe to go home?

Salter, the musician, found a space to rehearse ahead of his show Saturday.

But, just like the oppressive smoke, other things hang in the air.

Every cent he earns goes toward his music career, but being displaced has put a strain on his finances. He’s been eating out more, opting for only two meals a day to save on funds.

Though he loves living in Boyle Heights, he’s considered breaking his lease and moving elsewhere — but that has also proven difficult to do.

He doesn’t know when it will be safe to go home.

“Once I know that the fire is for sure out, then I can maybe slowly come back. I’ll just like stay at night at my place, and then be gone all day,” he said, “but I’m also just really concerned about a lot of the aftereffects.”(CNN)

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