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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A fire at the world’s largest battery storage plant in Northern California smoldered Friday after sending plumes of toxic smoke into the atmosphere, leading to the evacuation of up to 1,500 people. The blaze also shook up the young battery storage industry.

The fire at the Vistra Energy lithium battery plant in Moss Landing generated huge flames and significant amounts of smoke Thursday but had diminished significantly by Friday, Fire Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire Protection District of Monterey County said. Vistra is based in Texas.

“There’s very little, if any, of a plume emitting from that building,” Mendoza said. Crews are not engaging with the fire and are waiting for it to burn out, he said. Letting lithium-ion battery fires burn out is not unusual because they burn very hot and are hard to put out.

No injuries have been reported but residents raised concerns about hazardous gases being released into the air.

The fallout from the fire at the battery storage facility about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of San Francisco was just beginning.

“This is more than a fire, this a wake-up call for the industry. If we’re going to be moving ahead with sustainable energy, we need to have a safe battery system in place,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church said at a Friday morning briefing.

Battery storage is considered crucial for feeding clean electricity onto the grid when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing, and it has been used in significant amounts only in the last couple of years. But the batteries are nearly all lithium, which has a tendency toward “thermal runaway,” meaning it can catch fire and burn very hot, releasing toxic gases.

Vistra sells energy to Pacific Gas & Electric, one of the nation’s largest utilities.

The blaze did not spread beyond the facility, according to Monterey County spokesperson Nicholas Pasculli. Evacuation orders for from 1,200 to 1,500 people were lifted Friday evening after officials confirmed there was “no threat to human health,” the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. But residents were advised to close their windows and turn off their air conditioning.

“There’s no way to sugar coat it. This is a disaster,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSBW-TV.

Brad Watson, Vistra’s senior director of community affairs, said the Environmental Protection Agency is testing air quality at the facility and that the company has hired an air consultant to check for pollution in nearby communities. Vistra will share the results when they are available, Watson said.

Kelsey Scanlon, director of Monterey County’s Department of Emergency Management, told reporters that the release of hydrogen fluoride into the atmosphere from the blaze is a cause for concern.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hydrogen fluoride gas can irritate the eyes, mouth, throat, lungs and nose, and that too much exposure to the gas can be deadly.

Residents expressed concerns about air quality during an emergency meeting of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors earlier Friday.

“It doesn’t appear that the fire department had the appropriate fire retardants to minimize this fire and have to resort to actually letting it burn, exposing all of the residents, including Watsonville in Santa Cruz County, and this is extremely disturbing,” resident Silvia Morales said.

Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto said air quality monitoring systems had not detected any hazardous gases in the air.

Watson said two “overheating events” happened at the battery plant in 2021 and 2022 because the batteries got wet. A third incident happened in 2022 in the neighboring Elkhorn battery plant that is owned by PG&E, he said.

Lithium batteries make the power grid more stable and reduce the need for energy to be generated from fossil fuels, which release planet-warming gases. California was an early adopter of battery storage and leads the nation with more than 11 gigawatts of utility-scale storage online, which can meet nearly half of the demand on the state’s main grid for four hours per day.

Experts say lithium batteries are a safe technology that are essential for lowering carbon emissions and making grids more reliable. But they are a significant fire risk if they are damaged or overheat.

“We are not convinced that this incident could materially shift the national trend of growing grid scale battery deployment,” said Timothy Fox, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, a non-partisan energy research firm.

It was unclear what caused this latest fire. Vistra said in a statement that after it was detected, everyone at the site was evacuated safely. After the fire is out, an investigation will begin.

“Our top priority is the safety of the community and our personnel, and Vistra deeply appreciates the continued assistance of our local emergency responders,” Jenny Lyon, a spokesperson for Vistra, said in a statement.

Jodie Lutkenhaus, professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University, said safer batteries must be found that can be used on the grid.

Some improvements, such as more fire prevention measures, can be made to reduce fire risks with lithium batteries, Lutkenhaus said, “but the only way to really address the problem is to use a safer technology.” Water-based and redox flow batteries are being developed by scientists but have not yet scaled commercially.

Lithium iron phosphate batteries are a possible alternative because they are highly stable, but they still carry some fire risk.

No matter what kind of lithium battery you use, “when you reach a certain size, it is inherently very dangerous and easy to catch fire,” said Yiguang Ju, engineering professor at Princeton University.

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O’Malley reported from Philadelphia.

BOSTON (AP) — Tens of millions of residents along the East Coast are bracing for several inches of snow Sunday followed by dangerously cold temperatures that will take hold in much of the country from the Northern Plains to the tip of Maine.

Winter storm warnings issued by the National Weather Service have already gone into effect for parts of the Mid-Atlantic through Monday morning, with the forecast projecting up to a half-foot (15 centimeters) of snow. Warnings will begin in New England on Sunday afternoon, with parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Connecticut seeing as much as 10 inches (25 centimeters) of snow.

Marc Chenard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park Maryland, projected that as many as 70 million residents will be under some kind of winter storm hazards warning in the coming days including in New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Large cities like Philadelphia, New York and Boston could see several inches of snow this evening with the highest totals being outside of major cities.

“There will certainly be some more hazardous road conditions anywhere from D.C. up the whole I-95 corridor and then inland from there later today and tonight,” Chenard said. “Then it gets quite cold behind that. By Monday morning, any roads that haven’t been treated or cleared will still likely be some hazardous travel conditions.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams urged city residents to take the subway and buses if they have to travel during the storm, to make it easier for crews to clear the streets. He said people who need help with heating or frozen pipes can call 311, and he asked residents to check on their neighbors during the frigid weather.

“Cold temperatures, high winds tomorrow, could be dangerous,” Adams told reporters on Saturday afternoon. “We have to be here for each other and make sure our pets and other parts of New York are safe as we navigate through this cold weather condition we expect.”

The weather service said there was a chance of snow showers Sunday afternoon and evening in western New York state, where the Buffalo Bills are set to host the Baltimore Ravens in an NFL playoff game starting at 6:30 p.m.. Heavier, lake-effect snow was expected in that part of the state Monday through Wednesday morning, with 2 feet to 3 feet (about 60 to 90 centimeters) possible in some areas including Oswego along Lake Ontario.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy declared a state emergency for all 21 counties in the Garden State. A winter storm warning was in effect for 10 counties in the northern part of the state, where 6 to 8 inches of snow is expected to fall from Sunday afternoon through the late evening.

Cities and towns were opening warming centers for the next several days to protect people from the freezing temperatures.
Return of the Arctic blast

But the snow is just the start of a chaotic week of weather.

Much of the Eastern half of the United States will be enduring some of the coldest temperatures this winter, if not for several years.

An area from the Rockies into the Northern Plains will see colder than normal temperatures starting Sunday into the coming week, with temperatures dropping to minus 30 degrees F (minus 34 degrees C) to minus 55 F (minus 48 C) on Sunday and Monday. Wind chills of minus 40 F (minus 40 C) were already being clocked in parts of North Dakota and Minnesota. Sub-zero wind chills are forecast to reach as far south as Oklahoma and the Tennessee Valley.

The cold weather forecasted for Monday for Washington, D.C., prompted President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural ceremony to be moved inside the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

“It’s going to be a cold day in Washington, D.C. on Monday. That’s for sure,” Chenard said, noting temperatures will be in the 20s with wind gust upwards of 30 mph (48 kph).

As happened earlier this month, this latest cold snap comes from a disruption in the polar vortex, the ring of cold air usually trapped about the North Pole.

The cold air will moderate as it moves southward and eastward, but the Central and Eastern U.S. will still be cold with highs in the teens and 20s on Monday into Tuesday, Chenard said. The Mid-Atlantic and Northeast also will have highs in the teens and 20s, lows in the single digits and below zero degrees F (minus 18 C) and wind chills below zero.
Unusual wintry mix

The colder temperatures will reach down into the South early this week, where as many as 30 million people starting Monday could see a wintry mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain. The unusual conditions are expected to stretch from Texas into northern Florida and the Carolinas. Impacts are expected to start in Texas on Monday night and spread across the Gulf Coast and Southeast on Tuesday into Wednesday.

A combination of frigid air with a low pressure system over the Gulf are behind the storm, which could bring heavy snow just south of the Interstate 20 corridor across northern Louisiana and into Mississippi and a mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain near the Interstate 10 corridor from Houston to Mobile, Alabama.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry on Saturday issued a state of emergency in advance of the wintry weather. He encouraged Louisianans to be prepared and to monitor the weather forecast.
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Julie Walker contributed to this report from New York. She can be reached at https://x.com/jwalkreporter. Dave Collins contributed from Hartford, Connecticut. Bruce Shipkowski contributed from Toms River, New Jersey.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday ruled against an Obama-era policy to shield immigrants who came to the country illegally as young children, only three days before Donald Trump takes office with pledges of mass deportations.

The unanimous decision by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans — two judges appointed by Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and one by Democrat Barack Obama — is the latest blow for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, whose beneficiaries have lived in legal limbo for more than a decade.

It signals no immediate change for its more than 500,000 beneficiaries, who can renew temporary permits to live and work in the United States. But the federal government cannot take new applications, leaving an aging and thinning pool of recipients.

The decision may tee up the policy for a third visit to the Supreme Court. Trump sought to end DACA during his first term, but he also occasionally expressed wishes that beneficiaries be allowed to stay.

Obama introduced DACA in 2012, citing inaction by Congress on legislation aimed at giving those brought to the U.S. as children a path to legal status. Legal battles followed, including two trips to the Supreme Court.

This latest case involves a new version of the rule issued by President Joe Biden in 2022. It represented little substantive change from the 2012 memo that created DACA, but it was subject to public comment as part of a formal rule-making process intended to improve its chances of surviving legal muster.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Houston said the executive branch had overstepped its authority and barred he government from approving new applications. He left it intact for current beneficiaries while appeals played out in court.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who led the challenge on behalf of Republican-led states, called Friday’s ruling “a major victory.”

“I look forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump to ensure that the rule of law is restored, and the illegal immigration crisis is finally stopped,” Paxton said.

The U.S. Homeland Security Department didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment late Friday.

In 2016, with one vacancy on the Supreme Court, the justices deadlocked 4-4 over an expanded DACA and a version of the program for parents of DACA recipients, keeping in place a lower court decision for the benefits to be blocked. In 2020, the high court ruled 5-4 that the Trump administration improperly ended DACA by failing to follow federal procedures, allowing it to stay in place.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Police at a Georgia airport arrested an airline pilot on a DUI charge as he was making pre-flight checks aboard a Southwest Airlines flight with bloodshot eyes and reeking of what smelled like alcohol, according to a police report.

Passengers had boarded the Southwest Airlines flight from Savannah to Chicago and were awaiting takeoff Wednesday morning when police boarded the plane and took the pilot away in handcuffs.

Officers tracked down the 52-year-old pilot after an airport security officer reported that he “smelled of alcohol and appeared intoxicated” while checking in at a flight crew screening lane Wednesday morning, the Transportation Security Administration said in a statement.

An officer found the pilot “seated in the cockpit performing pre-flight checks,” the incident report by airport police said. It said the pilot gave off ”a strong odor of what seemed to be alcohol” and had “bloodshot, watery eyes and a flushed complexion.”

Police reported that the pilot said the odor came from nicotine patches. He told an officer that he had “a few light beers” to drink the night before.

The pilot was arrested after taking a field sobriety test that showed he had trouble staying balanced and other signs of intoxication, the police report said. He was arrested on a charge of driving under the influence after refusing a blood-alcohol test.

Southwest said in a statement that the pilot “has been removed from duty.”

“Customers were accommodated on other flights and we apologize for the disruption to their travel plans,” the airline’s statement said.

Federal Aviation Administration regulations prohibit pilots from flying within eight hours of consuming any amount of alcohol. Pilots also can’t fly if their blood alcohol concentration is 0.04 or higher. That’s half the legal limit for driving a car in Georgia.

The pilot was booked at the Chatham County jail in Savannah and released on a $3,500 bond. A phone number listed for him in New Hampshire was not in service Thursday. It was not immediately known if he had an attorney.