MOSS LANDING, Calif. — A major fire burning Friday at one of the world’s largest battery storage plants in Northern California is sending up flames of toxic smoke, leading to the evacuation of 1,700 people and the closure of a major highway.

The blaze in Moss Landing started Thursday sending towering flames and plumes of black smoke into the sky. But by Friday morning, the flames and smoke had significantly diminished in size, Fire Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire Protection District of Monterey County said.

“There’s very little, if any, of a plume emitting from that building,” Mendoza said. Crews are not engaging with the fire and are waiting for it to burn out, he said.

The blaze did not gone beyond the facility, according to Monterey County spokesperson Nicholas Pasculli. As of late Thursday, a few dozen people were at a temporary evacuation center and the rest had gone to friends or family or made other arrangements, Pasculli said.

The Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles (125 kilometers) south of San Francisco, is owned by Texas-based company Vistra Energy and contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries. The batteries are important for storing electricity from such renewable energy sources as solar energy, but if they go up in flames the blazes can be extremely difficult to put out.

“There’s no way to sugar coat it. This is a disaster, is what it is,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSBW-TV. But he said he did not expect the fire to spread beyond the concrete building it was enclosed in.

Residents expressed concerns about the fire’s impact on air quality during an emergency meeting of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors on Friday.

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“It doesn’t appear that the fire department had the appropriate fire retardants to minimize this fire and have to resort to actually letting it burn, exposing all of the residents, including Watsonville in Santa Cruz County, and this is extremely disturbing,” resident Silvia Morales said.

There were fires at the Vistra plant in 2021 and 2022 that were caused by a fire sprinkler system malfunction that resulted in some units overheating, according to The Mercury News.

Batteries such as those stored at Moss Landing make the grid more stable and reduce the need for energy to be generated from fossil fuels, which release planet-warming gases. California was an early adopter of battery storage and leads the nation with more than 11 gigawatt-hours online.

Experts say lithium batteries are a safe technology essential for lowering carbon emissions and making grids more reliable. But they are a significant fire risk if they are damaged or overheat.

“We are not convinced that this incident could materially shift the national trend of growing grid scale battery deployment,” said Timothy Fox, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, a non-partisan energy research firm.

It was unclear what caused this latest fire. Vistra said in a statement that after it was detected, everyone at the site was evacuated safely. After the fire is out, an investigation will begin.

“Our top priority is the safety of the community and our personnel, and Vistra deeply appreciates the continued assistance of our local emergency responders,” Jenny Lyon, a spokesperson for Vistra, said in a statement.

North Monterey County Unified School District announced that all schools and offices would be closed Friday due to the fire.