EPA Completes Work at Lario Staging Area
Emergency Response
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has completed all operations at the Lario Staging Area and fully demobilized from the site. EPA has conducted post-operational sampling and verified that EPA operations had no environmental impact on the area.
“The successful completion of EPA's work at the Lario staging area marks an important step in our hazardous materials removal mission throughout the Eaton fire zone," said Tara Fitzgerald, EPA's Incident Commander. "We recognize community concerns about environmental impacts from our operations and confirm that as anticipated, our work at the staging area had no adverse environmental effects on the site or the surrounding communities."
EPA implemented significant safety and mitigation measures to protect public health and the environment at and around the staging area. For more information on staging area safety measures, please see our Staging Area Fact Sheets.
EPA’s work is part of an all-of-government response to the Los Angeles wildfires. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assigned EPA to assess, remove, and safely dispose of hazardous materials from all burned areas. To do this, EPA established temporary staging areas where hazardous materials collected from the fire burn footprints were consolidated and repackaged in a controlled environment for safe transportation to final disposal facilities.
This effort, the first essential phase of recovery and the largest wildfire hazardous materials cleanup in EPA history, was completed in just 29 days with support from multiple government partners including FEMA, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and California state agencies.
The public can find more information about EPA’s hazardous material removal operations at EPA’s 2025 California Wildfires website.