{"id":333382,"date":"2026-05-26T21:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T21:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/333382\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T21:21:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T21:21:16","slug":"cooling-system-at-chemical-tanks-likely-failed-forcing-mass-o-c-evacuations-fire-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/333382\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooling system at chemical tanks likely failed, forcing mass O.C. evacuations, fire officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The crisis at a Garden Grove aerospace firm that required the evacuation of 50,000 <\/a>people was probably caused by the failure of a cooling system designed to regulate the temperature of chemical tanks, interim Orange County Fire Authority Chief TJ McGovern told The Times on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

This may have led to a buildup of heat in a pressurized tank filled with 7,000 gallons of a chemical called methyl methacrylate, a highly flammable liquid monomer used to manufacture plastics. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know why, but it stopped cooling,\u201d McGovern said. \u201cSo that\u2019s what started this event, to where the product heated up … and that\u2019s how this whole response started. We\u2019re just now being able to get to the tanks, so there\u2019s definitely more to come of what caused it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials evacuated an estimated 50,000 people on Friday after determining one of the three tanks at the aerospace company was in danger of a massive blast called a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion, which would have caused widespread damage. <\/p>\n

Further evaluations over the Memorial Day weekend found the tank had a crack that had reduced pressure, eliminating the possibility of a catastrophic blast. <\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday we really turned a corner,\u201d McGovern said.<\/p>\n

The confirmation that the tank was no longer pressurized enabled members of a team \u2014 made up of experts from the Fire Authority, Los Angeles and Long Beach fire departments, Los Angeles County and San Bernardino County fire departments, and the California Office of Emergency Services \u2014 to get closer to the tank to peel back the external wall and insulation, McGovern said.<\/p>\n

This enabled them to focus their unstaffed hose lines on the internal tank to cool the chemical more effectively, dropping the temperature to around 92 degrees. <\/p>\n

Although authorities reduced the size of the evacuation zone on Monday, officials stressed that the danger was not over in the immediate area around the Garden Grove aerospace facility. About 16,000 people remain under mandatory evacuation orders in the blocks immediately around the property.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to get you home as soon as possible, and our goal is to do that as soon as it\u2019s safe to do so,\u201d Greg Barta, a spokesperson with the Fire Authority, said during an incident update Tuesday morning. <\/p>\n

Officials have also emphasized that the crisis did not result in the release of chemicals that could be harmful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to reassure everyone who is outside of the new evacuation zone that, when you go home, you can feel safe,\u201d said Orange County Health Officer Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong. \u201cThere was no contamination, there were no fumes, there were no vapors that came from this incident. There was no leak.\u201d <\/p>\n

On Tuesday, McGovern said officials are going to start shutting down one of the two water supplies that are cooling the tank and assess how it responds. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking for any fluctuations. What we do not want is the internal temperature to increase because we\u2019re shutting down the water. We would really like it to decrease. … We\u2019re looking at the stability of the internal temperature,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If the temperature remains constant, officials will consider shutting down the secondary water supply. After that, if the temperature doesn\u2019t fluctuate, it would \u201ctell us that the fire problem, or the small explosion, has been mitigated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

By Tuesday night, officials probably will have a better picture of next steps, he said, including further reducing the size of the evacuation zones.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not there yet, but we\u2019re getting there,\u201d McGovern said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The crisis at a Garden Grove aerospace firm that required the evacuation of 50,000 people was probably caused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,136514,34728,136518,34920,138033,63,138035,137450,592,62233,11936,65694,36898,138034,137449],"class_list":["post-333382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-chemical-tank","tag-danger","tag-evacuation-zone","tag-fire-official","tag-garden-grove-aerospace-firm","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-mass-o-c-evacuation","tag-mcgovern","tag-people","tag-size","tag-system","tag-tank","tag-temperature","tag-times-tuesday","tag-vapor-explosion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333382","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=333382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}