Officials link Friday’s Moss Landing fire to 2025 fire

MOSS LANDING – Officials are terming Friday morning’s fire at the Moss Landing Power Plant, a “flare-up” linked to the cleanup of the January 2025 fire at the battery storage facility, and much smaller and less complex than the original fire.

The fire was expected to burn itself out within 24 hours, officials said.

Firefighters were dispatched to the Moss Landing Power Plant just after 6:15 a.m. Friday. Drivers could see smoke and flames coming from the north side of the facility. Firefighters confirmed that everyone working on the site was accounted for, with no injuries reported. A shelter-in-place order was issued for the surrounding area out of caution for health risks of smoke and debris. That order was lifted at 4 p.m.

By 10 a.m. no smoke was visible from Highway 1, but Dolan Road remained closed between the highway and Via Tanques Road. Traffic was flowing as usual, with emergency vehicles only occasionally passing in and out of Dolan Road.

Richard Stedman, air pollution control officer with the Monterey Bay Air Resources District, said they had not seen anything out of the ordinary in air quality relative to health standards or concentrations from the fire.

“This situation is complex,” said Kazami Brockman, on-scene coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency. Brockman said the building where the fire burned Friday had significant damage from the January 2025 fire.

County officials confirmed that building was the Moss 300 building — the same building that originally caught fire back in January 2025. The building caught fire a second time on Feb. 18, 2025.

The Vista facility has three buildings that store lithium-ion batteries, dubbed Moss 100, Moss 300 and Moss 350, in reference to how much power each building stores.

After the initial fire, there were 45,000 non-burned batteries intact and holding a charge officials said. Crews have been working to remove the batteries and delink them or remove the energy from them, pausing when reaching complicated areas that could cause flare-ups.

“Vista has been working hard to remove the accessible batteries, but there have been cases where we cannot move forward,” Brockman said.

EPA officials say about 3,600 batteries remained to be removed from the Moss 300 building, some of which caught fire Friday.

Vistra and Environmental Protection Agency officials warned there could be more flare-ups as they continue to move the damaged batteries. There have been no immediate changes to the clean-up schedule.

“We’re still in early phases for this flare-up, but at this point there is not any expected changes to the original cleanup schedule,” Brockman said early Friday afternoon.

“It’s frustrating that this has continued to happen,” said Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church, whose district includes Moss Landing and Castroville. “This fire is alarming for the community, bringing to the forefront once again that safety is paramount in every way we deal with battery energy storage systems. This incident really underscores just how volatile lithium batteries really are. While we need reliable and efficient battery energy storage systems, they key is that they really must be safe at all times whether while in operation or in a clean up. It’s very troublesome for the community when this continues to come up.”

The battery storage facility, a former Pacific Gas & Electric Co. electric power plant, had become one of the world’s largest battery power storage sites, operated by Texas-based Vistra. In January 2025, the facility erupted in a fire, jolting California’s renewable energy industry and prompting an investigation by the governor’s office.

Kyle Weston, manager of the Moss Landing KOA campground said that despite the relatively small fire, many visitors, remembering the much larger fire in January 2025 had cancelled their visits anyway.

“We ended up with a good amount of cancellations, a good amount of people kind of drawing back, looking back at a year and a half ago and kind of seeing what the fallout’s going to be from the smoke,” Weston said. “People are just cautious today.”

Staff writer Chris Hamilton and the Mercury News contributed to this report.