Sunday, 20 September 2026

A fire broke out Friday morning at the Moss Landing battery plant in Monterey County, prompting a shelter-in-place order for nearby residents along a portion of Highway 1. Authorities issued the order as a precaution because of smoke and potential hazardous materials tied to the blaze.

Flames were burning the plant's battery energy storage facility, officials said, with the North County Fire Protection District responding. By a noon briefing, the fire at Vistra's battery storage facility was hot and smoldering, and Fire Chief Jess Cortez of the North Monterey County Fire District said there was no active fire at that point. Cortez said the blaze was burning among the 1,500 battery modules remaining on the north side of the facility wall.

Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church linked the incident to ongoing cleanup work at the Vistra BESS facility, saying there had always been concern that removing remaining batteries could cause ignition, and that this was what happened.

Firefighters confirmed that everyone working on the site was accounted for and no injuries were reported.

Millions of Cubans lost electricity on Friday after the national grid gave way in an island-wide blackout.

The Ministry of Energy and Mines confirmed the outage through its official X account and said crews were working to restore service.

Authorities traced the collapse to a transmission-line failure in the west that took down the system as far as Matanzas province, then cut off the eastern half of the island.

By dusk, 5% of customers in Havana had power back.