MOSS LANDING — Highway 1 was closed and evacuations were ordered in the community of Moss Landing and the Elkhorn Slough area after a major fire erupted Thursday afternoon at a battery storage plant in Moss Landing in northern Monterey County.

The fire, which was raging out of control Thursday night, sending up huge flames and clouds of hazardous black smoke, was reported around 3 p.m. at the plant, located on Highway 1, Monterey County spokesman Nicholas Pasculli said.

“An evacuation order is not a suggestion,” Pasculli told KSBW TV at 7:30 pm. “It’s really important that people do comply with that order for their safety. The county and all our partners are throwing every resource behind this incident that we have. People need to remain calm in this situation and everybody will get through it.”

Evacuations of about 1,500 people were ordered for areas of Moss Landing south of Elkhorn Slough, north of Molera Road and Monterey Dunes Way, and west of Castroville Boulevard and Elkhorn Road to the ocean, he said.

NWS snap


PG&E owns a separate 182-megawatt battery storage plant on the north side of the site that has 256 Tesla “Megapack” battery packs. That facility did not appear to be burning by 8 p.m.


Batteries at the burning Vistra Energy plant were not identified in the article.