A large swath of North Orange County is under evacuation orders as emergency crews grapple with a faulty chemical tank in Garden Grove, with one fire official saying the tank will either leak toxic chemicals or blow up.
“That is what we were handed: a leaking tank or a tank that blows up,” said Orange County Fire Authority Incident Commander Craig Covey at a Friday afternoon news conference.
The incident began Thursday afternoon at GKN Aerospace on Western Avenue in Garden Grove.
“That tank, when it heated up on the first day, actually bulged,” Covey said. “If you ever seen videos of tank cars on a railroad track blowing up and that fireball it puts out and it blows half the tank car half a mile down the train track – that’s the incident potential we’re dealing with if this suffers a catastrophic failure.”
Initial evacuation orders were given for a smaller area and rescinded Thursday night, but Covey said it was discovered that the valves on the tank are damaged – forcing officials to reissue the orders and expand the evacuation zone on Friday.
Now, emergency response crews have little choice but to monitor the situation.
“We were unable to access the valves, the valves are broken and gummed up with the agent,” Covey said, adding that industry officials “advised us they have tried everything that they can and there’s nothing else they’re capable of doing to mitigate that crisis.”
Officials estimate the tank is holding 7,000 gallons of the toxic liquid that’s used to make plastic.
“At some point this is going to fail and we’re doing our best to figure out the when or how to prevent it,” Covey said.
The evacuation zone stretches from Ball Road to Trask Avenue and from Dale Street to Valley View Street – a large portion of North OC where tens of thousands of residents live.
Click here for more information regarding the evacuation zone and evacuation centers in Garden Grove and Cypress.
In an update posted to Facebook, OC Health Officer Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong said if the chemical vaporizes, that can cause a host of health issues for people in the evacuation zone.
“In this situation our biggest concern is when this chemical reacts and the tmperatures rise, it can cause a vapor and my biggest concern is when that vapor goes into the air and people inhale that – it causes significant damage,” Chinsio-Kwong said.
“It can cause a lot of irritation to your eyes, your nose, to your respiratory track – your lungs,” Kwong said, adding prolonged exposure can make people dizzy. “It can cause severe respiratory issues. We want to prevent that and that’s why we expanded the zone where people should be evacuated from.”
She also warned that the vapor has a certain smell to it.
“What we see in the literature, it can be a fruity and heavy smell. Smelling it doesn’t mean you reach a level that causes symptoms, but we don’t want you to smell that,” Kwong said, adding that air management officials had not detected vapor at that time.
“In the event there is a vapor that arises from the situation, as long as your outside of the evacuation zone – you should be ok,” she said.
According to a Friday Anaheim news release, “the tank is full of a precursor chemical to hardened plastic, known as methyl methacrylate. The material is used to make hard plastic components for aerospace.”
“One of the three tanks affected experienced an increase in temperature activating the relief valve and an overhead sprinkler system to cool the product,” said OC Fire Authority interim Fire Chief TJ McGovern at Friday’s news conference.
Covey said crews neutralized the “volatility” on one of the other two tanks.
He said the best case scenario is for the failing tank to leak “because once it comes out, it is no longer an explosive hazard,” adding that crews installed sand bags and other barriers to prevent the toxic liquid from hitting waterways and hazardous material crews can “mitigate” the vapors.
“I cannot emphasize this is not precautionary – this is going to happen unless some brilliant guy behind me here figures how we can mitigate this incident,” Covey said at the Friday news conference.
“Right now, there is no active gas leak coming off that thing. We have cooled it down enough that the purge valve on top of it is no longer purging any kinds of liquids,” Covey said at the Friday afternoon news conference. “There’s nothing in the air right now.”
He also said crews are monitoring the tank’s temperature with drones.
“We also have a set temperature where when it reaches that point, we know the tank is going into thermal runaway and we’re going to pull everyone out of the area to make sure it’s safe,” Covey said.
Garden Grove Mayor Stephanie Klopfenstein pleaded with people to follow evacuation orders.
“We want to get everyone’s home reopened in the area as soon as possible but we also have to do due diligence to make sure everything is safe first,” Klopfenstein said at the Friday news conference. “To everyone still in evacuation areas – please leave immediately. This is a serious situation.”
In a Friday Instagram post, Congressman Lou Correa called it an ”unbelieveable situation – unprecedented.”
Covey said officials are unsure what exactly happens if the tank explodes.
“So this is very serious. This evacuation needs to be paid attention to. People need to get out of their houses and get into a safe space. Because when this thing goes, depending on where the direction the wind’s going – we cannot control the weather,” he said.
“That’s why we’re pulling an evacuation circle that’s going to take effect no matter which way the wind is blowing at that time.”
n the Facebook update, Covey said temperature was holding steady.
“The positive news is that we have been able to keep the tank temperature maintained,” he said, adding that OC Fire Authority officials are coordinating with people throughout the country to “create something that’s never been done before, get all these brilliant minds together, to put a plan together so we don’t let this blow up.”
In a second Facebook update posted around 8 p.m. Friday, Covey said the group has “come up with some tremendous ideas that we’re going to start taking action on as soon as possibly tonight.”
“The great news is our efforts so far have continued to cool the tank. It’s down to a temperature around 61 degrees with 50 being its happy place,” Covey said.
“It is not ok with me just to sit back and watch this thing blow up or fail. That is not acceptable to me,” he said.
“We are going to work 24 hours a day – there’s a full night shift tonight out there working on it and engaging some of those concepts. We will give you an update tomorrow morning on how things are going.”