40,000+ evacuated in SoCal

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More than 40,000 people were evacuated in multiple Southern California cities on Friday after officials warned a leaking toxic chemical tank at an Orange County aerospace facility would inevitably fail and potentially explode. The industrial tank at the Garden Grove facility is estimated to contain 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate, a "highly volatile" and "highly flammable" toxic substance used in the production of plastics, said Orange County Fire Authority Chief Craig Covey. "This is gonna happen unless some brilliant guy behind me here figures out how we can mitigate this incident," Covey said at a news conference Friday afternoon. "This thing is gonna fail. We don't know when."

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"There are literally two options left remaining: One, the tank fails and spills a total of about [6,000] to 7,000 gallons of very bad chemicals into the parking lot and that area," Covey said. "Or two, the tank goes into a thermal runaway and blows up, affecting the tanks that are around it that have fuel or chemicals in them as well."

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Covey said it was unclear how widespread or dangerous an explosion could be, and said the timeline was unknown. "We want to prepare for the worst, but expect for things to get better," he said. He noted that a team has been assembled to "think outside the box," with a county hazmat team calling on experts throughout the state and country to help search for solutions to depressurize the affected tank and mitigate exposure. "Right now, there is no active gas leak coming off that thing," Covey said of the tank, noting there was currently nothing harmful in the air. "We have cooled it down enough that the purge valve that is on top of it is no longer purging any kind of product from the liquids there."

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