In the wake of an under­pass fire that shut down a seg­ment of Inter­state 10 in down­town Los Ange­les last Novem­ber, Cal­i­for­nia trans­porta­tion offi­cials want to make changes to the state pro­gram that leas­es space under and near free­ways, known as ‘air­space.’

As Christo­pher Weber explains in an arti­cle for ABC 7, the changes “would explic­it­ly ban stor­age of haz­ardous mate­ri­als like wood pal­lets and gaso­line and pro­vide more scruti­ny of peo­ple who want to rent out the prop­er­ties.”

The fire that broke out on Novem­ber 11 of last year was fueled by wood­en pal­lets, hand san­i­tiz­er, and oth­er mate­ri­als stored in vio­la­tion of the lease and dam­aged the free­way struc­ture. “Since the fire, Cal­trans has inspect­ed 47 sites, most of which were iden­ti­fied as poten­tial­ly high-risk and some that have more than one par­cel. Of these parcels, more than three quar­ters failed their inspec­tions.”