Only California Can Make A Mess Of A Mess

Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Astute California observers will recall the refrigerated meat storage facility that burned a few weeks ago in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles.  It became a national story as LA fire officials refused to enter the facility and extinguish the fire due to circumstances never completely described to the public.  It burned for days creating a noxious plume of smoke and eventually burned itself out.  Now, here we are, weeks later, and the noxiousness continues.

It seems the clean up is proceeding, but at a controlled pace – resulting in a huge pile of putrid, rotting meat that is, naturally, generating local pestilence.  The company has been fined for “unsanitary conditions” and just this morning I received notice of a public hearing for a nuisance odor violation.  Local officialdom is “outraged.”  Of course, they are outraged at everyone but themselves – which is where the outrage should be directed.

First of all, failing to extinguish the fire in a timely matter made what might have been a small mess a huge one.  That’s just for starters.  Now, recall the massive brush fires of January 2025.  People were prevented from entering their own property due to the potential presence of hazardous materials that the government then cleaned up over the course of some weeks.  Same story with this facility, absent the government clean-up.  Only difference is, this is a business, and so it becomes the problem.  That rotting meat is, by California definition, a hazardous waste.  California law requires that they prepare a clean-up plan and pull certain documents to clean it up properly.  That, of course takes time.  They have to locate a place for disposal, of which there are few in California.  Long distance trucking of the waste is the second issue.  Workers on site have to be properly outfitted with personal protective gear and extensively trained – again taking time and adding considerable expense, motivating the company to limit the number of workers involved in the clean-up, again slowing things down.  I could keep going, but you get the point.

Over-regulation, bureaucracy and government bungling made this mess far worse than it needed to be and the same forces are making the clean-up far more complicated, and therefore slower, than it needs to be.  And so, in classic California fashion, the elected officials and bureaucrats are dodging responsibility by pointing fingers at and piling on the regulated community, and Californians are taking the bait.  Rather than help the company, which gainfully employs Angelenos, as they did Angelenos proper after the wild fires, they have a scapegoat.  And so the games begin.  The company that operated the facility has applied to rebuild, why? I have no idea.

And people wonder why business is leaving California at a breakneck pace.  They shouldn’t.

And while we are in California…

…while we are talking about wild fires and goats.

…and getting sick.  This piece will make you so.

The state that used covid to turn itself into a gulag, keeps finding Soviet-like measure appealing.

Finally, the governor and potential presidential candidate whose record is abysmal and intelligence questionable has been revealed as cheating scum.  But then his administration has been so corrupt that this is not actually that surprising.