prompted officials to evacuate tens of thousands of people<\/a> from Garden Grove, California, and from parts of neighboring cities include loss of valve control and rising heat inside the tank that has already reached the volatile range of 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, Covey said.<\/p>\nThose temperatures are a prelude to a \u201cthermal runaway\u201d that could trigger an explosion, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are literally on the edge of it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/260523-garden-grove-calif-ww-1723-ed2bb2.jpg\")
An Orange County Fire Authority firefighter instructs a photographer to evacuate from the GKN Aerospace area in Garden Grove, Calif. on Friday.Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Firefighters on Saturday continued to use sprinklers and hose lines to cool the facilities. They hope that the process will trigger \u201ccuring\u201d in the chemical that would further slow its warming enough to thwart a blast.<\/p>\n
Covey said there\u2019s a possibility for a \u201cworst-case\u201d scenario in which the three tanks on site \u2014 including a 4,500-gallon tank \u2014 all explode. <\/p>\n
The hazmat events started Thursday with a \u201cvapor release\u201d at the aerospace manufacturing facility\u2019s 7,000-gallon tank, the OCFA said in a statement.<\/p>\n
First responders at GKN Aerospace may have initially measured faulty temperature readings because they were taken from outside the tanks\u2019 1-inch thick steel walls, Covey said. On Saturday morning, some fire personnel got perilously close to the stored chemicals and discovered they could read an internal temperature far greater than any they had seen, he said.<\/p>\n
The new assessment measured tank temperatures rising from 77 to 90, with an average increase of 1 degree per hour Saturday afternoon, Covey said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing everything we can to find ways to mitigate that,\u201d he said. \u201cThe worst-case scenario is that fireball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if a blast is averted, officials worry the tank could rupture and the chemical could leak into nearby storm drains and make its way to the Pacific Ocean. Covey said officials are working on contingency plans, including the possibility of preventing some of the chemical from getting into the storm drains, as well as efforts to \u201cdike, dam and divert it\u201d if it does. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is serious,\u201d Covey said. \u201cThis is real.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orange County Health Officer Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong said those outside the evacuation zone are unlikely to face health risks, but she warned the incident \u201cis a unique situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have information of a similar situation where this happened,\u201d she said at a news conference Friday.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/260523-garden-grove-calif-ww-1700-d82cb2.jpg\")
An emergency evacuation center at Freedom Hall for residents near the area of the chemical leak at GKN Aerospace Transparency building, in Fountain Valley, Calif. on Saturday.Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Evacuation orders have been issued for Garden Grove, about 35 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, as well as neighboring cities Cypress, Stanton, Anaheim, Buena Park and Westminster. Garden Grove Police Chief Amir El-Farra said Friday that the orders cover roughly 40,000 residents.<\/p>\n
Newsom\u2019s emergency declaration unlocks additional state resources, such as state-owned properties and fairgrounds that might be available as shelter for evacuees, the governor\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Firefighters on Saturday were trying to cool a chemical tank \u201cliterally on the edge\u201d of exploding in Southern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-330043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330043","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=330043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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