If you awoke this morning, rubbed the sleep from your eyes and wondered to yourself why your usual Muni stop smells weird — but, like, in a different way than usual — then you can blame that odd burning plastic smell on a debris fire that burned for 17 hours yesterday in Redwood City.

The fire was first reported around 1:20 p.m. Sunday at the SIMS Metals scrapyard located east of Highway 101. Although crews expected to have the fire out in a matter of hours, part of the fire was burning under a pile of scrap metal and fire crews had to use cranes to get at the smoldering debris. As the toxic smoke started to settle in the surrounding neighborhoods, authorities called a shelter in place in San Mateo County and eventually parts of Santa Clara and Alameda Counties as well.

This morning, however, the breeze shifted carrying the melted army man scent north to San Francisco where folks were catching a whiff everywhere from the Outer Sunset and the Lower Haight to Eastern SoMa and the Marina. On the bright side, the health advisory that was in place for the peninsula has been lifted, so the smell won't give you cancer any more than living in a major metropolitan area normally will.

[NBC Bay Area]
[Chron]