Los Angeles County filed a lawsuit Thursday in which they accused property owners and tenants of negligence in connection with a warehouse fire that sent discharge into the Dominguez Channel last year, causing a nauseating odor to linger in the Carson area for weeks and displacing thousands of farmers.
The county, along with its fire protection and flood control districts, said the warehouse owners and tenants knew of fire regulations and violations of hazardous materials before the Sept. 30 fire, but did nothing to alleviate them. It seeks to recover millions of dollars in costs associated with investigations, clean-up and public relocation, as well as injunctions and civil sanctions.
According to the complaint, the fire and the subsequent discharge of hazardous materials to storm drains and to the canal “should never have taken place.” Months before the fire, the complaint says, defendants knew that hazardous materials illegally stored in the warehouse “posed a serious fire hazard.”
The warehouse on South Avalon Boulevard in Carson is owned by Prologis Inc. and was rented at the time of the fire by makeup companies Virgin Scent Inc. and Day to Day Imports Inc. Day to Day and Virgin Scent are owned and operated by Akiva Nourollah, Yosef Nourollah, Yehuda Nourollah and Yaakov Nourollah, according to the complaint.
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