Hayley Smith
Environment Reporter at Los Angeles Times
Environment reporter @latimes. Covering wildfires, drought and climate change in California
Articles
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5 days ago |
latimes.com | Tony Briscoe |Hayley Smith
New soil testing by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has found high levels of lead and other toxic metals at homes destroyed by January’s catastrophic wildfires and cleared by federal cleanup crews. The county health department hired Roux Associates Inc. to conduct soil sampling at 30 homesites that had been cleaned up by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — the federal agency leading debris-removal operations for the Eaton and Palisades wildfires.
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1 week ago |
latimes.com | Tony Briscoe |Noah Haggerty |Hayley Smith
Over three days in late March, four Los Angeles Times environment reporters and an editor fanned out across the Eaton and Palisades burn scars to collect 40 soil samples from residential properties: 10 in each burn area from properties where debris removal was completed by the Army Corps of Engineers and 10 in each burn area from the yards of standing homes.
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1 week ago |
latimes.com | Tony Briscoe |Noah Haggerty |Hayley Smith
On the heels of the Eaton and Palisades fires, among the most destructive urban wildfires in U.S. history, federal and state disaster agencies have refused to pay for soil testing to ensure fire-related contamination no longer remains in thousands of now-empty dirt lots across Los Angeles County.
The L.A. wildfires left lead and other toxins in the soil of burn zones. Here are their health risks
1 week ago |
latimes.com | Tony Briscoe |Noah Haggerty |Hayley Smith
The Eaton and Palisades fires released mountains of hazardous material as flames chewed through old homes layered with lead paint and asbestos, kitchen cabinets filled with cleaning solutions, and cars, microwaves and other electronic devices filled with heavy metals. In the wake of the fires, federal officials broke from the decades-long tradition of testing soil in wildfire burn areas in California to determine whether and when it is safe for people to come home.
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2 weeks ago |
latimes.com | Ian James |Hayley Smith
The Trump administration this week summarily dismissed more than 400 scientists and other experts who had begun to write the latest National Climate Assessment report, informing them by email that the scope of the report was being reevaluated. The report, mandated by Congress, is prepared every four years under a 1990 law. It details the latest science on climate change, and also reports on progress in addressing global warming.
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