Los Angeles criticized for its handling of homelessness after 16 homeless people escape freeway fire

LOS ANGELES — The fire erupted after midnight where 16 people were living under the Los Angeles freeway, including a pregnant woman who was only weeks from giving birth.

As the flames engulfed the storage yard and the inferno’s heat melted some of the thoroughfare’s steel guardrails and concrete pillars, rescue crews were able to get everyone out safely. But the disaster has brought renewed criticism over officials’ inability to get homeless residents off the street, leaving tens of thousands living in perilous locations across the nation’s second-largest city.

Three years ago, as part of a court order related to a yearslong lawsuit accusing the city and county of Los Angeles of not doing enough to address homelessness, a judge wrote he was concerned about 7,000 people living under freeways, calling it “unreasonably dangerous.” County supervisor Hilda Solis said officials have since set aside nearly $300 million to create 6,700 shelter beds, but rows of tents and makeshift shelters are still a common sight under overpasses and along highway ramps.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom are now under pressure to not only reopen the section of Interstate 10 as fast as possible, but to find out who started the fire and what oversight the state had on the property. Bass has warned repeatedly against assumptions that homeless residents started the blaze, but that hasn’t stopped speculation and blame.

Late Wednesday, an attorney for Apex Development Inc., the company that leased the property, said the company had complained to city officials numerous times about fires started by homeless people on or near the property. Newsom has called the company a “bad actor,” and the state is in litigation with Apex speaking $78,000 in back rent for the property.

“It is unfortunate that Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass have used this incident to speculate and mischaracterize Apex and its principals as ‘bad actors’ to excuse their own failures to adequately address the public safety issues caused by the unhoused,” attorney Mainak D’Attaray said in an emailed statement.

A federally required January count estimated that on any given night there were more than 75,500 unhoused people in the county, with well over 46,000 of them in the Los Angeles city limits. Since 2015, homelessness has increased by 70% in the county and 80% in the city. Advocates over the years have sued the city and county to demand more action.

Investigators have made a preliminary determination that the blaze was intentionally set behind a fence where businesses were storing materials under I-10, but they said they do not know yet who started it.

Mel Tillekeratne, an advocate for homeless people and founder of nonprofit The Shower Of Hope, said Saturday’s blaze could have been a horrible human catastrophe.

“We were lucky there that nobody got hurt,” he said. “But something like this could happen at any other encampment at any other time. It’s just a tragedy waiting to happen.”

Tillekeratne said he hopes disasters like this shine a light on how homeless resources and facilities need to be staged in more neighborhoods to keep people away from highways, where pollution from exhaust and traffic accidents are major hazards.

“We’re talking about one of the busiest freeways in the U.S.,” he said, speaking of I-10.