Days after mass evacuations were ordered in Orange County, the next few hours could be crucial in dealing with a volatile chemical tank at a Garden Grove aerospace company that has threatened to either explode or cause a major spill.<\/p>\n
The latest development came Sunday night, when officials announced \u201can all-night mission\u201d to determine whether the tank in Garden Grove is still at risk of exploding.<\/p>\n
Here is what we know:<\/p>\n
Major operation<\/p>\n
The operation, about which there were few details, will be \u201cto confirm that the pressure in the tank has been released and that the BLEVE threat is eliminated,\u201d TJ McGovern, interim fire chief of the Orange County Fire Authority, said in a video posted to social media just before 9 p.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n
BLEVE stands for \u201cboiling liquid expanding vapor explosion.\u201d McGovern on Sunday described it as \u201cthe worst-case catastrophic event that we\u2019ve been talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not there yet,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to run this operation tonight. Please help us. Stay out of the evacuation zone. Let us run our operation, and tomorrow we will be giving you an update on what occurred this evening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rising temperature<\/p>\n
Officials said on Sunday that the failing pressurized Orange County tank \u2014 filled with a toxic chemical and at risk of exploding \u2014 had reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the maximum reading on the gauge. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe tank was at 100 degrees, or at least that\u2019s as high as the thermometer would go,\u201d state Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Orange) told reporters Sunday evening. <\/p>\n
On Saturday morning, the temperature was at 90 degrees, and on Friday, it was at 77, officials said earlier. The goal has been to reduce the temperature inside the tank to 50 degrees. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear what temperature would trigger an explosion; officials haven\u2019t made that information public. <\/p>\n
A \u2018potential crack\u2019 offers hope<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, McGovern said firefighters overnight detected \u201ca potential crack in the tank, which could potentially be relieving some of the pressure in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWith this new information, it could change our trajectory and our strategy to this event,\u201d McGovern said Sunday morning. \u201cWe\u2019re not there yet, but this was a step in a right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee Zeldin, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator, expressed optimism Sunday morning. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m being told this morning that the most likely scenario is one of a low volume release, where the local authorities are going to be able to monitor, neutralize and contain the threat,\u201d he said during a Sunday morning appearance on CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before there was an indication that there was a potential crack in the tank, officials had mentioned that they had a set temperature \u2014 without disclosing the number \u2014 at which they would need to evacuate emergency responders and chemists from the site of the tanks. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe also have a set temperature where, when it reaches that point, we know the tank is going into thermal runaway, and we\u2019re going to pull everybody out of the area, make sure it\u2019s safe, and let the tank do what it\u2019s going to do,\u201d said Craig Covey, an Orange County Fire Authority division chief. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Days after mass evacuations were ordered in Orange County, the next few hours could be crucial in dealing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,290262,17485,290259,451,14863,19249,290258,3,9585,290260,290263,6208,6087,290264,22323,229465,290261,452,453],"class_list":["post-663645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-d-orange","tag-degree","tag-gauge","tag-headlines","tag-information","tag-lee-zeldin","tag-maximum-temperature","tag-news","tag-official","tag-orange-county-chemical-tank","tag-reporter-sunday-evening","tag-risk","tag-saturday-morning","tag-state-sen-tom-umberg","tag-sunday-morning","tag-tank","tag-tj-mcgovern","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}