Fire shuts down LASplash Cosmetics
Friday’s fire at the company’s manufacturing facility in an unincorporated area of LA County precipitated the closure.
LASplash is reorganizing and plans to be operating again as soon as possible, according to a post on the company’s Instagram account. “We had an unfortunate accident yesterday. Our factory was burnt down. We are thankful that all employees got out safe. We have to temporarily shut down our operation,” reads more of that post from Saturday.
Uncharted territory
LA County comprises over 4,000 square miles of land and more than half of that is not formally part of any city, town, or municipality. “The unincorporated portion is about 2,600 square miles—enormous, more than twice the size of Rhode Island—and it contains a million people. If it were a city, it would be the second-largest in the county, next to Los Angeles,” clarifies Richard Brucknerin an interview with The Planning Report that looks at the future of land use in the unincorporated area.
In March of this year the LA County Board of Supervisors voted on a new plan and development pattern for the area, put together by Bruckner, who is the director of the Los Angeles County department of regional planning, and Connie Chung, the county supervising regional planner.
Business disrupted
Following the New York Times expose by Sarah Maslin Nir on worker exploitation and health risks at nail salons, “beauty consumers have been forced to consider their regular salon visits from a new perspective,” according to Simon Pitman, Senior Editor of Cosmetics Design.
Manufacturers at large maintain that manicure products contain only trace levels of toxic ingredients, which may put beauty consumers at ease but doesn’t mitigate the risk to salon staff (or those working with the product along the supply chain). That sort of coverage and concern as well as “the resulting media pressure will spell continued scrutiny by both consumers and legislators alike…[and,] the industry has few options but to remain accountable and transparent,” stated Pitman.
Cost of loss
Nail polish is behind the LASplash blaze. “The cause was ignition from an electric drill while mixing nail polish,” Melanie Flores, Los Angeles County fire department dispatch supervisor told the press.
And, “officials estimated the fire caused $1.9 million worth of damage to the building, and another $1 million in damage to the building’s contents,” she said.
The fire, which began Friday evening and burned for over 3 hours, left 30+ manufacturing employees at LASplash without a job to return to this week.
An unnamed company official told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that “the business hoped to reopen at a different location within two to three months, [and] that much of the irreplaceable items, such as data stored on computer hard drives, appeared to have been spared by the flames.”
“As is standard procedure…the California Department of Industrial Relations Division of Occupational Safety and Health was expected to investigate,” according to the Tribune.
