Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared a local emergency after a large warehouse caught fire in the Boyle Heights neighborhood. Governor Gavin Newsom then issued a state-level emergency declaration as well. When both city and state declare emergencies at the same time, it unlocks additional money and resources to handle the crisis, according to Reuters and USA Today.

The fire started at a large commercial building—likely a fabric storage facility or refrigerated warehouse—and sent thick smoke across a crowded part of East Los Angeles. AP News reported that officials told people in the area to stay inside with doors and windows shut to avoid the dangerous air. Solar panels covered the building's roof, which made fighting the fire much harder: firefighters cannot just turn off the power to solar panels the way they do for regular electricity, and the panels create risks of electrocution and the fire reigniting.

Having both a city and state emergency declaration matters practically. A city declaration lets officials request help from neighboring fire departments quickly and spend money without the usual delays. A state declaration brings in California's emergency services office, potential help from the National Guard, and air-quality experts from state agencies—all important when smoke spreads over a large area that needs to be watched carefully. The LAFD opened two emergency shelters for people who had to leave their homes, including the Pecan Recreation Center at 145 S. Pecan St.

Boyle Heights has many older apartment buildings packed closely together, and most do not have good air filtering systems. When officials tell people to shelter in place—stay inside and seal up—it works best in newer, well-built homes. Older buildings let air leak in around doors and windows, so people sheltering inside still breathe in harmful smoke. That's a real problem that emergency officials face often in older neighborhoods.

The type of building matters too. Fabric warehouses and cold-storage facilities burn differently than regular office buildings: they have lots of material that burns easily, and the materials themselves—textiles, refrigerants, insulation—burn for a very long time. When a fire burns longer, it creates more smoke and air pollution for more hours, and it takes longer before firefighters can start investigating how the fire started and what caused it.

Declaring both city and state emergencies for a single building fire is unusual in California, though it happened during the 2018 Woolsey and Camp fires. Using both declarations here tells us that either firefighters needed far more help than usual, or officials decided the smoke danger to the public was serious enough to need state-level support, or both. Confirmed reports have not yet said exactly how many people had to leave their homes.

In the coming weeks, officials from the fire department, county emergency services, the air quality district, and the state will review what happened. They will likely look closely at the solar panels—California has been installing them fast on commercial buildings, but firefighting safety rules have not kept up. This fire will probably lead to new rules about how solar panels should be installed on buildings so firefighters can work safer.