Rooftop solar fire at Lineage Cold Storage Warehouse in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles

A fire broke out on 17 June 2026 at a rooftop solar array on a nearly 500,000 square foot Lineage cold storage warehouse in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California. The site is operated by Los Palos Street Operating, owned by Altus Power, with Pearce Services acting as integrator responsible for maintenance work. A crew was working to bring the high voltage panels back online after an earlier fire in August 2024 had shut the array down. According to the Los Angeles Fire Chief, two small fires started during the repair work and the workers believed they had put both out, then called 911 when a third ignited. The fire burned for eight days, destroying the warehouse and around 88 million pounds of frozen food, and sent smoke and odours into surrounding neighbourhoods. Lineage has since filed a lawsuit against Los Palos Street Operating, the operator of the solar array, and Pearce Services, the integrator responsible for its maintenance, alleging the fire was caused by negligent reenergisation of the array despite connector failures and damaged wiring identified beforehand. The defendants deny the allegations and say they will contest the claims in court.

According to the lawsuit, more than 200 connector failures had been identified in the array roughly a month before the fire, eight of them in the area where the fire started. The suit alleges Pearce Services, as the maintenance contractor, used thousands of jumper connections between devices whose cables were otherwise incompatible, creating thousands of potential failure points, and that post-fire inspections revealed damaged wiring and loose connections. The lawsuit also alleges the August 2024 fire had damaged the array and that Lineage had directed the array be kept off until safety issues were addressed. These are allegations made in litigation, are denied by Los Palos Street Operating and Pearce Services, and have not been confirmed by a published fire investigation report.

1. Before reenergising a solar array after a fault or a previous fire, identified connector and wiring defects should be remediated and independently verified as complete.
2. Non-standard field modifications such as jumper connections between incompatible components can create large numbers of undetected failure points and should be avoided.
3. Where several small fires occur during repair or recommissioning work, crews should treat this as a possible systemic fault, stop work and escalate rather than assume each fire is out.
4. Lease and indemnity agreements between building owners, tenants and rooftop solar operators should set out safety, inspection and reenergisation responsibilities clearly in advance.

dailybulletin.com/2026/09/10/lineage-sues-solar-array-operator-over-massiv...