California, May 23 (IANS): Around 40,000 residents in Southern California’s Orange County were placed under evacuation orders after a storage tank holding methyl methacrylate – a highly flammable chemical used in acrylic plastic production – began venting hazardous vapours at a GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove. The leak, which started Thursday afternoon due to a cooling system failure in one of the facility’s three storage tanks, prompted authorities to expand evacuation orders on Friday as conditions worsened, forcing school closures and emergency responses across multiple cities. Officials outlined two alarming failure scenarios – either a spill of 6,000 to 7,000 gallons of the toxic chemical into surrounding areas, or a thermal runaway leading to an explosion that could compromise nearby tanks. “This thing is going to fail, and we don’t know when,” Orange County Fire Authority Chief Craig Covey warned during a public briefing.
Emergency crews had initially believed the situation was under control overnight, but deteriorating conditions on Friday forced a rapid escalation of the response, with residents in Garden Grove and neighbouring communities urged to leave immediately. The unstable 34,000-gallon tank, flagged in a critical update by the OC Fire Authority, remained a serious threat at the time of the briefing, with no active chemical plume reported but the risk of rupture or explosion still very much on the table. No injuries or fatalities have been reported so far.