About 40,000 residents just southeast of Los Angeles were called to evacuate on Friday due to a problem with a chemical tank. The tank in an industrial area in Garden Grove is filled with 26,000 liters of methyl methacrylate, a flammable substance used to produce plexiglass, for example.
“There are literally two options: the tank fails or it explodes,” Craig Covey of the Orange County Fire Department told reporters Friday. The leak was reported on Thursday, but the situation seemed stable until the tank’s valve turned out to be defective on Friday, Covey explained to, among others NBC News.
Firefighters keep the tank cool with water, buying time to find a solution “so this doesn’t explode,” Covey said. If the tank explodes, there are also concerns about nearby tanks filled with fuel, among other things.
Health authorities in Orange County are calling it an “unprecedented” situation and are calling on residents to follow evacuation orders.
There were no casualties in the incident on the GKN Aerospace site.
