California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Saturday in response to the looming threat of a chemical disaster in Orange County. The proclamation directs the Governor's Office of Emergency Services and other state agencies to provide additional support to local responders. State-owned properties are also being made available to shelter the 40,000 people ordered to evacuate from the area.
Evacuation and Response Efforts
“The safety of Orange County residents is the top priority,” Newsom said in a statement. “We are mobilizing every state resource available to support local responders and make sure the community has what they need to stay safe.”
On Thursday, a storage tank holding methyl methacrylate began off-gassing and threatened to fail at a facility in Garden Grove owned by GKN Aerospace, according to local authorities. The highly flammable chemical is used to fabricate resins and plastics. The tank contains between 6,000 and 7,000 gallons of the substance, and authorities warn it could either explode or leak its contents into the parking lot.
Firefighting and Containment Measures
Firefighters have been attempting to cool the tank by spraying it with water, but those efforts appear to be failing. An emergency response team entered the facility on Friday night to add a neutralizing agent to a separate nearby tank “to reduce its explosive potential,” said Orange County Fire Authority Division Chief Craig Covey in a video statement on Saturday. The team observed that the tank had reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit—about 13 degrees higher than the previous reading—and the temperature was rising by approximately one degree per hour.
Responders are preparing to dike and dam the contents in the event of a spill and mitigate health risks if an explosion occurs. Meanwhile, they are exploring “out of the box” strategies to avert the disaster entirely. “We’re bringing people in from all over the country, talking to people all over the place, trying to come up with additional options,” Covey said. “Letting this thing just fail and blow up is unacceptable to us.”
