{"id":329875,"date":"2026-05-23T23:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/329875\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T23:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:31:09","slug":"thousands-flee-their-homes-in-o-c-unsure-when-they-can-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/329875\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands flee their homes in O.C., unsure when they can return"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thousands fled their homes in Orange County due to the chemical leak at a Garden Grove<\/a> aerospace plant, but it remains unclear how long they will need places to live.<\/p>\n

Officials said the crisis remains anything but resolved, <\/a>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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe kids are confused, a little worried. They had a lot of questions when we said we had to evacuate,\u201d said Tricia Quach, 38, who had visited the Cypress Community Center to take her daughter to an art class. \u201cMaybe being blown up, that\u2019s a scary situation. But we just assured them it\u2019s for safety reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s family had decided to hang out at the community center for a few hours after the art class.<\/p>\n

\"Evacuees <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

(Allen J. Schaben\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe kind of don\u2019t know what to expect,\u201d said Helen Fernandez, 40, who lives in Buena Park. \u201cWe are just winging it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came back, and half the cars are gone and the other half are leaving all at once,\u201d Loo said. \u201cSo we\u2019re trying to evacuate, and I\u2019m getting dizzy with a headache in the middle of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loo said they managed to gather his mother-in-law\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

On Friday night, they were considering staying at a hotel, even though prices have been marked up for the Memorial Day Weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now it\u2019s like $200 to $400 for a place that\u2019d normally be 60 or 70 bucks,\u201d Loo said. \u201cPretty much everything I make this weekend is going to go to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yoshi Nakashini, 79, sat at a table outside the Cypress Community Center with his two cats, Melon and Mocha, peering out from their carriers.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It was a struggle for them to find a pet-friendly hotel, but his girlfriend\u2019s son eventually found one.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just checked out and stopped here to see what\u2019s going on,\u201d Nakashini said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know yet what we\u2019ll do.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He arrived at the emegency shelter at Kennedy High School in the early hours of the morning.<\/p>\n

Smith said he packed, so it wasn\u2019t \u201ctoo dreadful,\u201d but the Air Force veteran did liken the evacuation to a deployment, owing primarily to the uncertainty of how long the evacuation might last.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really interesting,\u201d said Smith, who was in good spirits. \u201cI feel kind of like a refugee. \u2026 Going into the gym, you see all the cots lined up and everything, they give you a fresh blanket and stuff like that. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cJust a bunch of regular people now thrown into a situation, everybody doing the best they can. Everybody seems pretty chill, nobody\u2019s on edge or trying to cause me trouble or anything. I think people just want to get back to normal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands fled their homes in Orange County due to the chemical leak at a Garden Grove aerospace plant,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1311,25316,136908,136909,53304,136911,48397,1073,48895,136907,136630,611,136910,3293,2695],"class_list":["post-329875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-buena-park","tag-cat","tag-cypress-community-center","tag-evacuation-shelter","tag-family-friend","tag-garden-grove-aerospace-plant","tag-girlfriend","tag-home","tag-little-notice","tag-local-hotel","tag-loo","tag-orange-county","tag-scary-situation","tag-thousand","tag-weekend"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329875","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=329875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}