A battery flare-up and community outcry bring déjà vu to Moss Landing.

Erik Chalhoub here. I live roughly 12 miles from Vistra’s Moss Landing Power Plant, and despite that distance, there was an odd metallic smell in the air for about a day during the 2025 fire.

When a battery ignited at Vistra’s facility on the morning of Friday, Sept. 18, emergency officials issued a shelter-in-place order for people living within a third of a mile of the site. About an hour later, an informational notification was sent out to a broader area.

I only received the notification as a member of the media, not as a resident of North County signed up for Alert Monterey County.

While the new flare-up was nowhere near the scale of the 2025 fire—it was reduced to a smolder in about four hours, according to officials—smoke travels far. And that’s what County of Monterey officials heard during the Board of Supervisors meeting today, Sept. 22: The notification was far too narrow.

In what has become a routine since January 2025, the supervisors extended an emergency proclamation for the fire for another two months today, the 12th time the board has done so.

But in light of Friday’s flare-up, the action was a reminder that the site is still dangerous, even nearly two years later.

County Emergency Services Manager Laura Emmons said about 2,500 energized battery modules were left in the Moss 300 facility when it burned, with 1,300 being destroyed in the latest fire. It’s far below the 45,000 batteries that were in the facility prior to the 2025 fire, which have been removed over the months.

Health Program Coordinator Nicki Fowler said Vistra’s consultant has taken soil samples at six sites at nearby locations, which are currently being examined in the lab for pollutants. Hydrogen fluoride was not detected in the air at the facility’s perimeter, and although there were some elevated readings of fine particles near the site, it was not found at nearby monitoring locations, according to Fowler.

Ed Mitchell, lead investigator of the group Never Again Moss Landing, said officials needed to collect samples from the smoke by using a drone in order to get accurate readings of pollutants in the air.

“In 20 months they, including your people, haven’t figured out that you need to take a sample of the smoke,” he told the supervisors. “That’s dangerously wrong.”

Prunedale resident Michelle Clary questioned why the County’s alert did not extend farther.

“We have the same right to get out of the area as somebody right on the perimeter,” she said. “We don’t want to breathe that smoke.”

Supervisor Glenn Church said he was concerned about the narrow notification. “It needs to be a broader area,” he said.

Emmons said about 15,000 text notifications were sent out to residents, while Supervisor Kate Daniels said her team sent 17,000 texts to Monterey Peninsula residents.

“We want to go as far as we possibly can in the information sphere,” Daniels said.