Heights

June 20 (UPI) — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Saturday issued a declaration of local emergency as the city continues to fight a major fire at a cold-storage warehouse in the city’s Boyle Heights neighborhood.

The fire erupted on June 17 and has since caused smoke to blanket the surrounding area as the warehouse continues to smolder, leading the city to open 24-hour-per-day smoke relief centers for resident who cannot shelter-in-place.

The fire, which was described by Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Jamie Moore as “a very unique challenge,” started around 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the 500,000-square-foot building, ABC7 and The Los Angeles Times reported.

Fire officials said that hazardous materials, including ammonia, have been removed from the building, but foam insulation inside of the building’s walls, among other things, continues to burn.

“While the LAFD continues making progress, this is a major, multi-jurisdictional incident,” Bass said in a statement announcing the declaration.

“The City and County have opened spaces for families seeking relief from the smoke, and we will continue working around the clock and doing everything possible to put this fire out completely,” Bass said.

The ammonia at the warehouse has been pumped out and transported elsewhere, Lineage Logistics, which operates the facility, said in a statement.

The company also said that it believes the fire started when a neighboring business tested a solar array on Wednesday.

Aside from the insulation, city officials said that they also concerned about the rooftop solar array and lithium-ion batteries at the warehouse catching fire, as well as eventually clearing out roughly 85 million pounds of decaying — if not also burnt — food products, most of which is meat.

The LAFD has worked since Wednesday to ventilate the building so that firefighters can more safely enter the building to suppress the fire, department spokesperson Lyndsey Lantz said in a series of updates posted on its website this week.

which carried with it warnings for residents in the surrounding area to avoid smoke inhalation.

Although much of the smoke from ventilating the building had started to clear by mid-day on Friday, an anticipated change in the wind on Friday after, which caused the fire to also flare up, made smoke more visible than it had been since Thursday.

“LAFD crews continue to work diligently on the warehouse fire in Boyle Heights,” Lantz said in an update at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday.

“The smell of smoke has reached most of the city, and we encourage everyone to limit exposure as much as possible.”

As soccer fans await the FIFA World Cup kickoff Thursday — and as criticism of the organization’s ticketing practices and social impact on local communities circulates across North America, where the games will be held — longtime aficionados want to remind the sports community of the real beauty beneath the game.

Last Friday at Espacio 1839 in Boyle Heights, visitors were greeted by the thumping bass of cumbia sonideras, earthy scent of leather trinkets and clothing racks featuring silky screen-printed soccer jerseys. The Latino-centric gift shop reached maximum capacity with a new pop-up art exhibit titled “El Fútbol Es del Pueblo,” featuring over 30 artworks that provide commentary on the global sport.

“It’s reclaiming the sport again, reminding folks that the essence of the game belongs to the people,” said Nico Aviña, owner of Espacio 1839. “With everything that’s going on with the World Cup, everybody’s giving FIFA credit, but I think that we need to reclaim that power. This is a people’s sport and it belongs to us.”

Nico Avina gets ready to start a soccer match at Mariachi Plaza at “El Futbol es del Pueblo,” a community soccer event hosted by Espacio 1839.

(Jill Connelly/For De Los)

Every four years, soccer fans around the globe go berserk over the World Cup, but in host cities like Los Angeles, the worldwide spectacle feels bittersweet and financially out of reach. Fans have paid thousands of dollars for non-premium seating at SoFi Stadium; this does not include parking, which is estimated to be about $250 near the venue.

“ I’m not interested in going into those games or paying these ridiculous amounts,” said Aviña. “It’s more about greed. It’s more about wealth extraction than anything else.”

That sentiment resonated with 42-year-old Antonio Rivera, a Bay Area local who recalled the excitement he felt as a child in Jalisco watching the 1986 World Cup, which Mexico hosted. He remembers his little toy bank shaped like Pique, the anthropomorphic jalapeño pepper that was Mexico’s tournament mascot.

“You hear stories of people going to the World Cup with their whole family.  Now you can’t even get a ticket,” he said. “ It’s an important opportunity for people to talk about some of the discomforts that they may have with  an organization like FIFA.”

Rivera was at Espacio 1839 on Friday accompanying his son, Marc Rivera, one of the youngest exhibitors, alongside his classmate Miguel Yanez. The tweens came down from Napa, Calif., to showcase their acrylic comic-strip painting featuring Mexican soccer player Alexis Vega, who channels his Mesoamerican ancestors when scoring the victory goal.

Marc Rivera explains the meaning behind his painting on display at “El Futbol es del Pueblo.”

(Jill Connelly/For De Los)

“It’s important to expose our next generation and give them an opportunity to express themselves a little bit,” Antonio Rivera said.

Tijuana artist Vianney Harelly’s piece was hard to miss on the wall. It featured a bloody cross with the Spanish words for “soccer comes with blood and tears.” It also included headlines from articles regarding the Naupan artisans who were allegedly underpaid by Adidas and social-impact brand Someone Somewhere, during its work on the latest embroidered Mexican soccer kit.

“I wanted it to be a piece showing kind of the dark side of the World Cup, because there’s so many things that are buried underneath the whole spectacle,” Harelly said.

The 30-year-old said they are not interested in tuning into the World Cup activities because of the close relationship between FIFA President Gianni Infantino and President Trump. Human rights organizations have called on the FIFA leader to request that the Trump administration declare a moratorium on ICE raids during the soccer tournament; SoFi stadium workers threatened to strike if agents aren’t kept out of the venue.

Artwork on display at “El Futbol es del Pueblo.”

(Jill Connelly/For De Los)

“I know people want to be seen and celebrated and they wanna feel love,” Harelly said. “But I don’t want them to settle and think that the only option for them to feel love and be seen is through corporations that hate us.”

Gerardo Gómez looked mesmerized as he glanced at the wall. Some of his favorite pieces included a scarf that read “Siempre Antifascista” and a banner that featured a masked Indigenous soccer player with the words “Futbol Libertad.”

“I think a lot of us here love the sport, but we are against FIFA,” Gómez said. “What you’re seeing here is a representation of the people’s struggle that comes with the sport.”

The 46-year-old said the soccer organization, as well as the Olympic Games, have a history of displacing marginalized communities; for example, ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil, at least 19,000 families were displaced to make way for sporting infrastructure.

That’s why he’d rather put his focus on the Homeless World Cup, an annual international street football tournament that advocates an end to homelessness globally. Players are individuals who have experienced some form of homelessness or social exclusion in their life.

“People that came together [for the Homeless World Cup] recognized that soccer brings people together,” said Gómez. “And it’s the most beautiful thing I have experienced.”

A soccer match at Mariachi Plaza on June 5, 2026.

(Jill Connelly/For De Los)

As the sun went down, the crowd shifted over a block to Mariachi Plaza where a 3-vs.-3 cascarita, or scrimmage, began on the pavement. Onlookers gathered around the makeshift field, which had no clear outer bounds, as the pulsating drumming and anti-ICE chants led by Lxs Tigres del NorthEnd (an independent LAFC supporter group) filled the air.

“It’s very bittersweet,” said 30-year-old Claudia Llontop. “With families being deported.”

Llontop, who grew up watching the World Cup, arrived at the pick-up match with her two children — and even documented her journey getting there on TikTok to her more than 50,000 followers. She had been trying to find ways to kick a ball around when she heard about “El Fútbol Es del Pueblo,” which allowed her to put on a red mesh jersey and run like the wind.

“This is for single moms, this is for kids, this is for high schoolers,” said Llontop. “ I think this alone is a lot more powerful than FIFA, because this is us.”

In the debut episode of “The De Los Podcast,” hosts Fidel Martinez and Suzy Exposito spoke with the Latin Grammy-nominated singer and actor Leslie Grace about her long-awaited new music — plus some of the highlights and pain points throughout her film career.

Released in May, Grace’s bilingual record “Amor, ¿Quién Eres?” is the first album she’s released in over a decade. Suffused with what Exposito described as “tropical eleganza,” the album is a far cry from the Christian music Grace recorded in her teen years — and a marked shift from the Latin Grammy-nominated self-titled project she released in 2013. She touched on some of the personal developments required to reach the more sensual sonic landscape she explored in her latest release.

“The biggest learning has been how to protect my creative space, while I grow it and discover at the same time,” she told De Los.

The 31-year-old also discussed her work in the 2021 movie musical “In the Heights” — and the online backlash the film received due to the lack of other Afro-Latinos in the cast.

“The lack of representation within film [and] diversity within the Latin community is a conversation we haven’t touched on as much,” she said. “Only so many films [are] given a shot. There [are] certain ways that Latinos are portrayed that are very narrowed down in film. I think it’s a worthwhile conversation at any time. I’m glad that people started to talk about that, so [we] can get more stories.”

Reflecting further on her filmography, Grace talked about the canceled release of “Batgirl,” in which she played the titular role. The film, which was originally for a late 2022 debut on the HBO Max streaming service, was axed by its studio Warner Bros. for financial reasons.

“It was disappointing because we knew the film that we were making,” Grace said of the movie, which was in postproduction when it was scrapped. “I knew that it wasn’t a reflection of our work, because this is something that happens. But I think because of the context of the conversation around representation, and the way that films can be discarded, after a lot of work and time and money has gone into something … the creative community really felt for me.”

During that period, Grace said the support from other creatives helped her move forward. She has since starred in more independent films in recent years — including “In the Summers,” which won a grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024 — and the 2026 features “Stages” and “Campeón Gabacho,” which premiered at this year’s edition of South By Southwest.

“I really am grateful for every person that reached out to me and was like: ‘Hey, I’ve got you, whatever you need,’ or ‘This is wrong,’” Grace said. “When something happens to me, I focus on my experience and what I gained from it, that no one could really take away.”