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. Fire crews were not engaging with the fire but were waiting for it to burn out on its own, The Mercury News reported. The blaze was still burning early Friday and it had 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 centre 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 kilometres) 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 the