California Wildfires Left Behind 9 Billion Pounds of Toxic Ash and Debris

California wildfires left behind 9 billion pounds of toxic ash and debris

After the wildfires ravaged homes in Los Angeles, California, cleanup crews faced a new challenge: electric car batteries that can explode when damaged.

Postcard from California: After the fires, is LA safe from buried toxic hazards? Don’t ask FEMA

After a wildfire wiped out the northern California town of Paradise in 2018, federal and state disaster recovery crews took exhaustive efforts to determine if it was safe for residents to move back. First, the US Army Corps of Engineers scraped six inches of topsoil from burned lots to remove lead, arsenic and other hazardous chemicals. Then, contractors dug even deeper to collect soil samples to test for remaining toxic hazards. When tests show…