Several blocks in Garden Grove were evacuated Thursday afternoon as toxic chemicals spewed into the air from a leaking storage tank at an aerospace company, authorities said.<\/p>\n
The Orange County Fire Authority responded to reports of a hazardous materials incident at a business in the 12000 block of Western Avenue at 3:30 p.m., according to agency spokesperson Larry Kurtz. Upon arriving at the scene, they determined that methyl methacrylate, a volatile liquid used to make plastic, was leaking out of a 34,000-gallon vat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe company actually creates acrylic plastics for the aerospace industry and that\u2019s the reason for the chemical,\u201d said Kurtz. \u201cThe problem with this chemical is it is a possible flammable liquid and it does have exothermic properties.\u201d This means that the chemical can release heat when a reaction is triggered.<\/p>\n
The incident appeared to take place at GKN Aerospace, which builds engine structures, landing gear and other products for commercial and military aircraft.<\/p>\n
To minimize any potential health risk, areas north of Garden Grove Boulevard, east of Monarch Street, south of Orangewood Avenue and west of Beach Boulevard were evacuated. A reunification point was set up at Rancho Alamitos High School at 11351 Dale St.<\/p>\n
Kurtz said the evacuations were a precautionary measure, \u201cso if anything bad were to happen, we\u2019re dealing with property damage and not life safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Fire Department was spraying water at the tank to cool down the chemical, said Kurtz. The leak also triggered the business\u2019 automatic sprinkler system. He said it would take a couple of hours to mitigate the chemical leak, after which investigators will focus on determining the cause of the incident. <\/p>\n
OnScene.TV contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several blocks in Garden Grove were evacuated Thursday afternoon as toxic chemicals spewed into the air from a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[387,7,9,8,3655,11078,135972,4456,135973,135974,13449,3729,288,32480,10809,65694,135971,978],"class_list":["post-327245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-business","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-chemical","tag-garden-grove","tag-garden-grove-aerospace-company","tag-incident","tag-kurtz","tag-monarch-street","tag-plastic","tag-report","tag-resident","tag-several-block","tag-south","tag-tank","tag-toxic-chemical","tag-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}