Thousands fled their homes in Orange County due to the chemical leak at a Garden Grove aerospace plant, but it remains unclear how long they will need places to live.
Officials said the crisis remains anything but resolved, with a chemical tank still in danger of exploding. Residents in portions of six Orange County cities are covered by the order: Garden Grove, Cypress, Stanton, Anaheim, Buena Park and Westminster.
Evacuation shelters filled up, along with local hotels. Fleeing the homes with little notice was one thing. But many are asking how long it will be before they can return home.
“The kids are confused, a little worried. They had a lot of questions when we said we had to evacuate,” said Tricia Quach, 38, who had visited the Cypress Community Center to take her daughter to an art class. “Maybe being blown up, that’s a scary situation. But we just assured them it’s for safety reasons.”
She and her husband and two kids, ages 5 and 10, are staying with a family friend at the moment. With nowhere to go the rest of the day, Quach and her neighbor’s family had decided to hang out at the community center for a few hours after the art class.
Evacuees take shelter as American Red Cross workers offer drinks and food at the Freedom Hall evacuation center at Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley on the third day of a toxic chemical leak at GKN Aerospace in Garden Grove on Saturday.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“We kind of don’t know what to expect,” said Helen Fernandez, 40, who lives in Buena Park. “We are just winging it.”
Bar manager Miguel Loo, 30, lives about two or three miles away from the leaking chemical plant. He was shopping with his family around noon in Irvine ahead of his birthday this weekend when they received a notice to evacuate from the city.
“We came back, and half the cars are gone and the other half are leaving all at once,” Loo said. “So we’re trying to evacuate, and I’m getting dizzy with a headache in the middle of it.”
Loo said they managed to gather his mother-in-law’s medication, supplies for their French bulldog, Wednesday, important documents and other essentials. But there were still valuable belongings at their home, and his family was concerned burglars might try to ignore the hazardous chemicals in the air and take advantage of the situation.
On Friday night, they were considering staying at a hotel, even though prices have been marked up for the Memorial Day Weekend.
“Right now it’s like $200 to $400 for a place that’d normally be 60 or 70 bucks,” Loo said. “Pretty much everything I make this weekend is going to go to that.”
Yoshi Nakashini, 79, sat at a table outside the Cypress Community Center with his two cats, Melon and Mocha, peering out from their carriers.
He, his girlfriend and her son stayed at a hotel near Disneyland last night. It was pricey, totally around $350 for two rooms to house them and their cats. And parking was another $30 per car.
It was a struggle for them to find a pet-friendly hotel, but his girlfriend’s son eventually found one.
“We just checked out and stopped here to see what’s going on,” Nakashini said. “We don’t know yet what we’ll do.”
Charles Smith Jr., 64, of Cypress, did not find himself in the initial evacuation area, but when the zone was expanded his household was affected.
He arrived at the emegency shelter at Kennedy High School in the early hours of the morning.
Smith said he packed, so it wasn’t “too dreadful,” but the Air Force veteran did liken the evacuation to a deployment, owing primarily to the uncertainty of how long the evacuation might last.
“It’s really interesting,” said Smith, who was in good spirits. “I feel kind of like a refugee. … Going into the gym, you see all the cots lined up and everything, they give you a fresh blanket and stuff like that. …
“Just a bunch of regular people now thrown into a situation, everybody doing the best they can. Everybody seems pretty chill, nobody’s on edge or trying to cause me trouble or anything. I think people just want to get back to normal.”