{"id":820182,"date":"2026-05-25T02:40:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T02:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/820182\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T02:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T02:40:13","slug":"garden-grove-chemical-plant-crisis-what-to-know-and-evacuation-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/820182\/","title":{"rendered":"Garden Grove Chemical Plant Crisis: What to Know and Evacuation Map"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fire officials said on Sunday that a tank in Southern California containing a highly flammable toxic chemical appears to have cracked, in what has been interpreted as a possible sign that an explosion or rupture might be averted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

TJ McGovern, the interim fire chief of the Orange County Fire Authority, said in a video<\/a> posted to social media that a team of experts had found a potential crack in the tank, which could relieve some of the internal pressure<\/p>\n

However, fire officials are \u201cdefinitely not ruling out the possibility of the tank erupting,\u201d Capt. Wayhowe Huang said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n

The temperature inside the tank had reached at least 100 degrees on Sunday. Local fire officials had said on Saturday that the temperature had risen more than 20 degrees and was still rising.<\/p>\n

\u201cLetting this thing just fail and blow up is unacceptable to us,\u201d said Craig Covey, an incident commander with the Orange County Fire Authority, on Saturday. \u201cOur goal is to find something and not allow that to happen, not let it damage our community, not let it damage our environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

As efforts continued, more than 40,000 residents in the area are under evacuation orders. . Officials continued to warn that they were unsure of the extent of the potential danger and have also become increasingly concerned that some residents may be prematurely looking to return.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could have a combustion event that could be pretty catastrophic,\u201d said Joseph E. Shepherd, a professor at the California Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where the situation stands:<\/p>\n

What steps are being taken to prevent an explosion?<\/p>\n

Firefighters in Garden Grove, Calif., had gone on Thursday to the site, which belongs to GKN Aerospace, where an industrial tank containing about 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate was becoming pressurized and releasing gas as it overheated.<\/p>\n

The tank was bulging dangerously, a sign that it could eventually explode.<\/p>\n

Firefighters had been spraying the tank with water in an effort to lower the temperature of the chemical inside. Officials are looking for a way to stop the chemical reaction that is causing the crisis.<\/p>\n

What happened?<\/p>\n

Methyl methacrylate, which is used to make plastics, has a low boiling point so it can easily overheat and turn to gas. Chemical plants typically have many fail safes for situations like this, experts said.<\/p>\n

But when members of GKN Aerospace\u2019s response team arrived to inject a neutralizing agent into the tank to reduce the liquid\u2019s volatility, they learned that the tank\u2019s valves were gummed up, making the interior inaccessible, said Mr. Covey.<\/p>\n

That left no clear options to prevent the tank from failing, Mr. Covey said.<\/p>\n

How could this crisis end?<\/p>\n

It is possible that the tank could crack and allow the 7,000 gallons of liquid to pour out, Mr. Covey said.<\/p>\n

The fire department has made sand barriers to prevent the chemical from spilling into storm drains and river channels, he added.<\/p>\n

It is also possible, Mr. Covey said, that the tank could explode and launch a fireball into the air.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019ve ever seen videos of tank cars on a railroad track blowing up \u2014 and that fireball it puts out \u2014 and it blows half the tank car half a mile down the train track, that\u2019s the incident potential we are dealing with if this suffers a catastrophic failure,\u201d Mr. Covey said.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Mr. Covey outlined a third possibility, after noting that the liquid in the tank is rising in temperature about one degree per hour. He said that it is possible the liquid, through a chemical reaction, is turning into a solid and that they hope the tank may have enough capacity to handle the pressure as that takes place.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the heavy deluge of water and cooling it, we are allowing it to cool at a slower rate and reducing its overpressure,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the thoughts. So like an ice cube that freezes from the outside in, this stuff cures, it heats up and cures, from the outside in.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is unclear why the liquid in the tank cannot be released in a controlled way to reduce pressure in the tank. It is possible that so much liquid has already vaporized inside that there is too much pressure to do that safely, said Faisal Khan, the head of the chemical engineering department at Texas A&M University.<\/p>\n

The worst-case scenario, he said, would be a rupture of the tank that launches fire and debris into the air.<\/p>\n

If about half of the material in the tank is released, the fireball from this explosion could be about the size of a house, Mr. Khan said.<\/p>\n

What is the extent of the evacuations?<\/p>\n

The evacuation area, which included shelters in Garden Grove, Cypress and Anaheim, was designed to be large because officials were not able to predict where a fireball from an explosion would land.<\/p>\n

Some 40,000 people were evacuated from areas around the plant.<\/p>\n

Is exposure to the chemical dangerous?<\/p>\n

Methyl methacrylate is toxic when inhaled, and causes irritation to the respiratory system and potential damage to other organs.<\/p>\n

If the pressure keeps building inside the tank, the chemical inside eventually \u201ccould be shot outwards everywhere and then you have this cloud of toxin,\u201d said Elias Picazo, a chemistry professor at the University of Southern California.<\/p>\n

What company owns the plant?<\/p>\n

The plant belongs to GKN Aerospace, a manufacturing company based in the United Kingdom that produces jet engine parts, landing gear and other components for military and civilian aircraft.<\/p>\n

About 16,000 people are employed at the company overall, including at least 540 at the location with the leak in Garden Grove, Calif., according to a 2024 news release. Its products are used in planes produced by Airbus, Boeing and Bombardier as well as the space industry.<\/p>\n

Charlotte Dulany and Shawn Hubler contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fire officials said on Sunday that a tank in Southern California containing a highly flammable toxic chemical appears…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":820183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,11230,184799,316786,337275,11227,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,337274,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-820182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-chemicals","tag-factories-and-manufacturing","tag-fires-and-firefighters","tag-garden-grove-calif","tag-hazardous-and-toxic-substances","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-orange-county-calif","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116632907202369899","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}