TL;DR: A fire reported around 6:15 a.m. on Friday, September 18, 2026, ignited damaged, still-energized batteries inside Vistra's Moss Landing storage building in Monterey County, triggering shelter-in-place orders within a third of a mile that were lifted that afternoon.
Fire crews answered a structure fire at the Moss Landing Power Plant at 7301 State Highway 1 on Friday morning, according to the Los Angeles Times. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection logged the response at around 6:15 a.m., and the North Monterey County Fire District dispatched crews shortly after that time. Responders found smoke and flames coming from the north side of the facility. The burning structure carried significant damage from the Vistra battery energy storage facility fire of January 2025. County officials said the new incident involves batteries previously damaged in that earlier blaze and forced the temporary evacuation of more than a thousand residents at the time.
What ignited on September 18
The September fire started in batteries that crews had not yet removed after the larger fire on Jan. 16, 2025, according to NBC Bay Area. Authorities held a midday briefing on Friday to describe conditions at the site. Officials said the fire was expected to burn itself out by Saturday, and it was brought under control on Friday afternoon.
Estimates of the batteries involved varied by source on the same day. Vistra said in a statement late Friday that about 1,200 batteries ignited that morning, with county officials reporting the fire inactive and crews remaining on site to monitor, according to Bloomberg. Other field briefings placed the number higher. The fire involved 1,500 batteries that were still energized inside a structure damaged during the 2025 fire, according to KSBW. Assemblymember Dawn Addis said about 1,500 hard-to-access batteries remain on the property. Ron George, manager of the Vistra plant in Moss Landing, said between 1,000 and 2,000 energized batteries remained at the facility, according to ABC7 San Francisco.
George said those batteries remain energized from when they were charged before the original fire. He said the unit had been disconnected from the electric grid after the 2025 fire and the batteries were idle. He acknowledged that until all batteries are removed from the site, there is a possibility of future flareups like the one that occurred Friday.
Why crews could not reach the batteries
Jess Cortez, fire chief with the North County Fire Protection District, said the batteries were inaccessible after the 2025 fire because they were along a wall at risk of collapse. Cortez said the best tactic is to let these batteries burn themselves out. Division-level fire managers echoed that approach during the day, saying firefighters would monitor the fire from a distance with drones rather than place personnel inside an unstable structure.
CAL FIRE Battalion Chief Josh Silviera said crews were choosing to allow the fire to burn itself out rather than put firefighters in harm's way where there was no value in interior attack, according to KTVU FOX 2. Josh Silveira, public information officer for CAL FIRE Monterey County, said the fire was contained to the building of origin, which was already previously damaged by fire. Authorities said Friday's fire is not comparable to the January 2025 fire in terms of its scale or complexity, but they anticipated it could burn itself out over the next 24 hours.
The cause of the 2025 fire has not been released, and authorities did not say what might have sparked Friday's new blaze. Vistra plant manager Ron George said the company was still working through what caused the original battery fire that occurred in January 2025. Cortez said the remaining batteries spontaneously ignited Friday morning and were fully energized.
Shelter orders, schools and roads
The county issued shelter-in-place orders within a third of a mile of the Vistra battery energy storage facility at 7301 State Highway 1 after the fire was first reported. The orders covered Zone PAZ-1, known as the area within one-third of a mile of 7301 Highway 1. Officials advised residents in zones nearby to shelter in place until further notice, with windows and doors closed and air conditioning systems turned off.
At 7 a.m., the North County Fire Protection District began advising people living near the power plant to keep windows and doors closed and to shut off all air conditioning systems. People living close to the plant were told to go indoors immediately. Anyone driving near the area was also told to leave. The California Highway Patrol implemented a hard closure of Dolan Road between Highway 1 and Via Tanques Road. Highway 1 remained open, though drivers were advised to avoid the area.
Authorities initially instructed students and staff at some schools in the area to stay inside Friday morning, but eventually allowed students to go outside. The North Monterey County Unified School District kept students and staff indoors at Elkhorn and Castroville elementary schools, North Monterey County Middle School, and North Monterey County High School. The district later said its shelter-in-place order had been lifted, schools and activities would continue as scheduled, and air-quality readings were in the normal range.
The Monterey County Sheriff's Office lifted the shelter-in-place order for the area within one-third of a mile at around 4 p.m. The hard closure of Dolan Road was also lifted at around the same time. Shelter-in-place orders for several areas were lifted around 10:30 a.m., while orders in the immediate vicinity remained in place until Friday afternoon. Everyone working at the facility has been accounted for, and no injuries have been reported. The incident was managed under a unified command that includes the Monterey County Sheriff's Office, and the county's Emergency Operations Center was activated.
Air monitoring and weather
Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Monterey Bay Air Resources District monitored sensors around the facility and said they did not show readings out of the ordinary Friday. The EPA had air monitors working in the area, and fire crews used drones to assess conditions. Richard Stedman, air pollution control officer for the Monterey Bay Air Resources District, said monitoring did not indicate an air-quality problem resulting in exposure.
A meteorologist with the National Weather Service said light winds and a marine layer kept smoke from the fire from spreading very far. Local officials said the current health threat from Friday's fire appeared to be low. Residents had formed the group Never Again Moss Landing after the previous fire and raised concerns about heavy metal from smoke, while county officials and the EPA said this fire and its impacts were much smaller than the previous fire.
Cleanup work that was underway
The fire occurred as cleanup work continued following the January 2025 blaze, which damaged the same building. That blaze burned for days and damaged more than half of the site's 100,000 lithium-ion batteries. Authorities said Friday's fire started in the same building as the previous fire.
The EPA earlier in September said it was starting the final phase of battery cleanup and demolition of the battery storage building and was going to take every precaution to mitigate the risk of a fire incident on site. Prior to Friday's fire, the EPA had estimated that the battery removal and building demolition process would be complete by mid-2027. Addis said initial cleanup and battery removal, under supervision of the federal EPA, were completed two weeks ago, while 1,500 hard-to-access batteries remain in the damaged area.
What the site is and what is next door
Vistra built Moss Landing on the California coast, south of Santa Cruz, to supply grid capacity to the greater Silicon Valley region, according to Canary Media. It was the world's most powerful grid battery when it came online in 2020, with 300 megawatts and 1,200 megawatt-hours packed into a former gas turbine hall. Vistra has been working on demolishing the site, a process that entails removing intact batteries still in the building, de-energizing them, and shipping them for recycling or disposal. Workers had already extracted 34,000 battery modules and hoped to finish extracting the last 5,000 modules later this year, and those batteries may carry some residual charge.
Utility Pacific Gas & Electric operates grid infrastructure next door to Vistra's Moss Landing site. A spokesperson confirmed that the fire did not start on, or spread to, PG&E property. The utility took its adjacent Elkhorn battery plant offline after the 2025 Vistra fire to assess damage and plans to resume service there on July 1, 2027.
Officials respond
Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church, who represents the Moss Landing area, said he is deeply disappointed and frustrated at having to deal with another fire at the same site. Church led multiple community meetings about the 2025 fire and resulting investigation. He said the fire underscores how volatile the battery storage systems can be and said it is troublesome for the community when this continues to come up.
Addis said she was frustrated and deeply concerned by the repeat fire and received initial briefings early Friday morning. She asked surrounding communities to follow all safety instructions from emergency services. Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas said the safety of the Central Coast community is always a top priority, thanked firefighters and first responders on the scene, and urged residents to follow all emergency guidance and warnings and heed directions of local officials. Monterey County Sheriff's spokesperson Cmdr. Andres Rosas said officials would update the community as soon as a decision was made on lifting orders.
For households nearby, the practical lesson from Friday was to follow shelter guidance promptly when told to go inside, close windows and doors, shut off air conditioning systems, avoid the immediate area, and wait for the Sheriff's Office and fire district to announce when orders and road closures are lifted.