Law born of Boyle Heights warehouse fire will raise fines on large buildings statewide from 2028
Sept. 27, 2026 — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday signed two bills responding to the June 17 fire at a nearly 500,000-square-foot Lineage cold-storage warehouse in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The fire burned for more than a week; Sen. María Elena Durazo said neighbors lived for months with smoke and the stench of rotting food. Fire officials traced the blaze to the roof near a 13,000-panel solar array, but the official cause is undetermined.
SB 716 began as a 2025 bill about telephone service. In August, Durazo replaced its contents with the fire response. It failed in an Assembly committee on Aug. 27, was granted reconsideration the same day and passed the Assembly 45-18 on Aug. 31.
The law raises maximum local fines for health and safety violations at nonresidential buildings of 20,000 square feet or more to $1,000 for a first violation, $2,000 for a second and $5,000 after that, and up to $50,000 per violation when it leads to a state or federal disaster declaration. It applies first in Los Angeles County and, according to trade summaries, statewide from July 1, 2028, which would include San Diego County.
AB 817, by Assemblymember Mark González, makes a contingency fund or insurance for community emergency needs a condition of building permits for certain large cold-storage facilities.
The commercial real estate group CREDA SoCal said the fines reach nearly every large nonresidential building, whatever its use. Residents have sued Lineage; the company says it removed ammonia soon after the fire began.
The wall: Which areas qualify after 2028 and the size of AB 817's required fund are not stated in the governor's release.
Tier: Confirmed (based on the governor's release and the bills' histories, not their final texts)
Corrections
- Corrected Oct. 3, 2026: the notes on what this story is based on and what remains unknown were revised for clarity. The facts are unchanged.
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