The city of Los Angeles has settled a lawsuit brought on behalf of street vendors by agreeing to repeal bans on vending near schools and farmers markets and canceling citations issued to vendors for selling in restricted areas, attorneys representing vendors announced Friday.

The lawsuit, which was filed in late 2022, alleged city ordinances that established no-vending zones and banned street vendors from working within 500 feet of schools, farmers markets, swap meets and temporary events violated state laws.

“The bans are gone and the vendors have been vindicated,” said Merlín Alvarado, a street vendor and plaintiff in the lawsuit who has been selling fruit and hot dogs on Hollywood Boulevard for 17 years. Alvarado, other vendors and community advocates gathered Friday morning on Hollywood Boulevard with pro bono attorneys who filed the lawsuit to celebrate the settlement.

“Street vending is one of our city’s great traditions and resources and we look forward to being fully recognized for our role as community contributors,” she said.

In February, the Los Angeles City Council voted to eliminate the no-vending zones, which included high-congestion areas such as the Hollywood Bowl, Crypto.com Arena and Universal Studios.

The settlement agreement builds on that decision by opening more spaces for vendors and guaranteeing a refund for vendors who were ticketed in the no-vending zones, said Doug Smith with Inclusive Action for the City, a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

“Los Angeles loves street vendors, but historically, our laws have not shown that love,” Smith said. “That’s why this is a really important victory.”

Although the settlement has been signed by representatives from both sides and filed in court, the City Council and mayor must still formally approve it, according to Public Counsel, one of the firms representing the plaintiffs. In a news release, the plaintiffs said they expect those approvals when the City Council returns from a recess in August.

Requests for comment from Mayor Karen Bass were not returned. A representative for City Councilmember Hugo Soto Martinez, who has been an outspoken supporter of vendors, said the council member was unavailable to comment on the settlement.

Under the terms of the settlement, vendors who paid no-vending zone citations within the last five years will be refunded and any unpaid citations will be canceled.

Many street vendors took the risk of receiving a citation in order to sell in high-traffic areas such as Hollywood Boulevard, said Ruth Monroy, a street vendor of seven years and a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The vendors can now set up in customer-heavy areas without having to worry about violating city law or being fined, she said.

The settlement also sends a message to other cities in the state that may have vending restrictions, Smith said.

“The days of redlining vendors are over and old tools of exclusion are no longer legal,” he said. “Now other cities in California are on notice that arbitrary vending bans are illegal and they can and will be challenged.”

Vending “within the immediate vicinity” of swap meets and farmers markets is still prohibited according to state law, the settlement said. Smith said there is more to be done to create specific policies that will allow street vendors to work while complying with city regulations.

“We’re excited to roll up our sleeves and showcase that policies are better when they’re created with the expertise of the communities that are most impacted,” he said. “The lawsuit doesn’t end the work, but it sets us up.”

Five people were injured, two critically, in an explosion Saturday morning at a food truck in a popular dining and shopping area of Whittier, according to authorities.

Eleven units of firefighters and paramedics were dispatched at 9:17 a.m. to the 6700 block of Greenleaf Avenue, said Martin Rangel, supervising fire dispatcher at the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

“There was an explosion of some kind” but no fire when first responders arrived at the scene at 9:21, he said.

Whittier Police Department is investigating the circumstances around the incident and were expected to report the case to Cal/OSHA.

Rangel said it was most likely a propane tank explosion. Whittier police officials weren’t immediately available for comment.

The National Fire Protection Assn. says that 68% of food truck fires are related to leaks or structural failures in propane tanks. As the food truck business has grown over the years, there have been periodic occurrences of propane-related accidents, the most notorious in the summer of 2014 when an explosion and ensuing fire of a food truck in Philadelphia claimed the lives of the truck owner and her daughter and injured 11 others.

Food truck explosions and fires are rare in California, which has some of the strictest regulations governing the safety of mobile food operations, according to experts.

More than 2,700 food trucks and trailers operate in Los Angeles County, said Matt Geller, head of the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Assn. Geller wasn’t aware of the Whittier food truck explosion. He said it didn’t appear that the truck operator was a member of his association.

“It’s a pretty rare event,” Geller said, noting that the last food truck fire that he could recall was 10 years ago in Venice. At the same time, he said, “we have a lot of old trucks.”

The five who were injured Saturday in Whittier were apparently crew members of the food truck, said Rangel. They were treated on site and transported to a hospital, with two having suffered critical injuries, two with moderate injuries and one with a minor injury, Rangel said.

He didn’t have details of the food business or the owner of the truck, but some working in neighboring shops said it was related to a coffee business where the truck was parked, in the part of the town known as Uptown Whittier.

Video images showed a small section of Greenleaf Avenue was cordoned off Saturday, but by midday, the street was clear, said people in nearby businesses.

After decades of resistance, Carmel-by-the-Sea is about to address some of its residents’ biggest frustrations.

Quite literally.

The moneyed little town, where homes and businesses have no street addresses, soon will have numbers assigned to its buildings, forgoing a cherished local tradition after too many complaints about lost packages, trouble setting up utilities and banking accounts, and other problems.

The Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council approved establishing street addresses in a 3-2 vote earlier this month, with proponents citing public safety concerns and the need to abide by the state fire code, which requires buildings to be numbered.

“Do we need to wait for someone to die in order to decide that this is the right thing to do? It is the law,” said Councilmember Karen Ferlito, who voted in favor of addresses.

Rather than street numbers, residents in the town of 3,200 have long used directional descriptors: City Hall is on the east side of Monte Verde Street between Ocean and 7th avenues. And they give their homes whimsical names such as Sea Castle, Somewhere and Faux Chateau.

There is no home mail delivery. Locals pick up their parcels at the downtown post office, where, many say, serendipitous run-ins with neighbors are an essential part of the small-town charm.

For more than 100 years, residents fought to keep it that way, once threatening to secede from California if addresses were imposed. They argued that the lack of house numbers — along with other quirks, such as no streetlights or sidewalks in residential areas — added to the vaunted “village character.”

“We are losing this place, day by day and week by week, from people who want to modernize us, who want to take us to a new level, when we want to stay where we are,” Neal Kruse, co-chair of the Carmel Preservation Assn., said during the July 9 City Council meeting at which addresses were approved.

The debate over street numbers has simmered for years and intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people began shopping online more frequently and struggled to get their packages delivered.

Some residents and tourists worry that if they have an accident or a medical issue, emergency responders will have trouble finding them. Others have had trouble receiving mail-order prescriptions and medical equipment.

“This is a life-and-death situation in my life and my family,” resident Deanna Dickman told the City Council. “I want a street address that people can find on GPS and get there, and my wife can get the medication she needs.”

Dickman said her wife needs a shot that comes through the mail and must be refrigerated. If she can’t get it delivered, she has to travel to an infusion center and get her medication every 30 days “so she can breathe,” Dickman said.

Dickman once had her own temperature-controlled medication “tossed over a fence a block away.” The property owner was not home, and it spoiled.

Resident Susan Bjerre said she once needed oxygen delivered to her house for someone who had just gotten out of the hospital. The delivery driver could not find the residence, so she said: “I will be in the street. I will wave you down.”

“This is going to sound really snarky, but I think people who oppose instituting an address system don’t realize how inconsiderate they are to everyone else,” Bjerre said.

Another speaker, Alice Cory, said she worried that implementing addresses in Carmel-by-the-Sea — long a haven for artists, writers and poets — “would just make us another town along the coast.”

In the one-square-mile town, “the police know where everybody is,” and fire officials get to people quickly because there are so few streets, she said.

“Let’s keep it that way, and let’s keep the sweetness of this little town, because people know Carmel for a reason,” she said.

Neal Kruse, center, with Karyl Hall and her dog, Bubbles, chat with a resident at the Carmel Preservation Assn. booth at a farmers market. Kruse and Hall worry street addresses will hurt the town’s character.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Emily Garay, a city administrative analyst, told the council that while local authorities might be familiar with Carmel-by-the-Sea’s unconventional navigational practices, other emergency responders — such as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection or Monterey County’s contracted ambulance provider — might struggle to quickly figure out where people live.

The California Fire Code requires buildings to have and display addresses. But Carmel-by-the-Sea has not enforced the provision.

“I believe, as a professional firefighter for over 37 years [with] a lot of experience in emergency response, that if the question is, ‘Is it more advantageous to have building numbers identified?’ Yes, absolutely,” Andrew Miller, chief of the Monterey Fire Department, told the council.

Residents opposed to street addresses have said they fear that numbering houses would lead to home mail delivery — which, in turn, could trigger the closure of the Carmel-by-the-Sea post office.

In January, David Rupert, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service told The Times that the post office had “been serving the local community since 1889” and there were no plans to close it. (The lobby for the post office was red-tagged this spring after a septuagenarian crashed her red Tesla through the front windows.)

Garay said addresses would not trigger home delivery.

Before voting against addresses, Mayor Dave Potter said he was “concerned about the fact that we’re kind of losing our character of our community along the way here” and that it had become the nature of the community “to fight over little things.”

But Ferlito said she had received “piles of emails from residents” who wanted addresses and worried about being found in a crisis.

“If we’re saying we will lose our quaintness because we have an address, I think that’s a false narrative,” she said. “This is more than quaintness. This is life emergencies.”