Los Angeles Chinatown fire leaves 50 homeless, residents angry over ignoring warnings
Residents had warned officials about squatters and safety issues at a construction site from where the blaze spread to a nearby building
When Andy Liang stepped outside his apartment building to investigate the fumes he smelled in the early morning of September 13, he saw there was a small fire at the abandoned construction site next door on Bunker Hill Avenue in Los Angeles.
Liang turned around and walked back into the second-floor apartment that he shared with his parents. Their apartment faced the construction site, but this wasn’t the first fire that had broken out next door.
“I thought it was nothing serious until it started spreading,” Liang said.
The fire jumped to a neighbouring three-storey apartment building, injuring six people and displacing 50 individual tenants and families. Liang, who called 911 after the blaze started growing, roused his parents and evacuated when the flames threatened his unit.
The construction site has been an ongoing issue for the neighbourhood, attracting squatters and forcing first responders to put out a number of small fires there after it was abandoned at the end of 2022.
Wilson, who declined to give his last name because of privacy concerns, said he moved into a unit on New Depot Street with a friend and her three children about three months ago. Right away, he said, he noticed squatters living nearby in the construction site. Every night when he was trying to sleep, he’d hear people moving around or making noise.