For six days over a holiday weekend, a chemical tank at a Garden Grove aerospace plant posed the threat of a major explosion, forcing more than 50,000 residents from their homes while emergency crews worked to bring the danger under control.
The tank at GKN Aerospace, which manufactures cockpit windows and shields for military aircraft, had been heating up after a cooling system valve failed. Officials used drones to read the tank’s temperature from outside the facility while crews deployed an unmanned ground monitoring system and water cannon to spray the tank and keep it cool.
At the height of the emergency, officials feared the tank could rupture or explode, potentially sending a toxic chemical cloud over nearby neighborhoods. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office sent more than 700 personnel to Garden Grove as local and state agencies responded.
The immediate danger eased only after the tank cracked enough to release pressure without triggering a blast. Evacuation orders were lifted by Tuesday night, but the near-disaster has left residents, community advocates and environmental experts demanding answers about what regulators knew before the crisis — and whether California’s oversight system missed warning signs.
The incident has exposed possible gaps across several regulatory programs. Air quality officials had flagged compliance problems at GKN years before the emergency. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is now investigating whether any laws were broken. Community leaders say residents deserve a clear accounting of what safety measures were in place, how the chemical was being stored and why the situation came so close to catastrophe.
GKN had been working through environmental compliance issues at the same time regulators and local planners were reviewing a proposed expansion of the Garden Grove facility, which would increase production capacity for components used in F-35 military fighter jets.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District has inspected GKN three times in the past decade. For much of that period, the facility was classified as a “minor source” of emissions under the district’s permitting system, a designation that did not require frequent inspections.
Records show that limited oversight may have coincided with years of compliance problems, though regulators have said those violations were not tied to the storage tank that held methyl methacrylate, the chemical involved in the emergency.
In 2020, GKN voluntarily reported certain issues that prompted South Coast air regulators to inspect the site and review company records. The district’s investigation found that violations had occurred as far back as 2017. According to regulatory documents, the plant, located less than a mile from homes and schools, failed to maintain required emissions records, operated new equipment without proper permits and used equipment that did not match the descriptions in its existing permits.
The air district did not issue a formal notice of violation until April 2021. A settlement was not finalized until late 2024, when GKN agreed to pay more than $900,000. The company did not admit liability in the agreement, which resolved 14 alleged violations.
South Coast regulators now consider GKN a “major source” of emissions, a category subject to annual inspections. A district spokesperson said the company has applied for a more comprehensive permit at the direction of regulators.
For residents and community advocates, the timeline has added to frustration.
“That delay and the fact that GKN was allowed to operate with what felt like impunity has meant tens of thousands of Garden Grove residents are now paying the price,” said Tracy La, executive director of VietRISE, a nonprofit that works with Vietnamese and immigrant communities in Orange County.
La said evacuees faced costs for temporary lodging, replacement medications, transportation and other emergency needs after being forced from their homes.
“It is frustrating that everyday people are the ones who continue to bear the consequences when government officials are unwilling to hold powerful and wealthy corporations accountable,” she said.
Garden Grove is part of Little Saigon, one of the largest Vietnamese American communities in the country and home to many immigrants and refugees from the Vietnam War.
For some residents, methyl methacrylate is not an obscure aerospace chemical. It is a workplace hazard they have fought for years to remove from nail salons.
Lisa Fu, who leads the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, said Vietnamese nail salon workers across the state campaigned against the chemical because of its effects on the lungs, skin and eyes. California banned the use of methyl methacrylate in nail salons and cosmetology schools in 2015 after workers raised health concerns.
Now, Fu said, the same chemical was leaking from a tank only a short distance from Little Saigon. She said members of her organization and residents reported nosebleeds, itching and the deaths of pet birds.
Air monitors placed near the plant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the South Coast air district recorded pollution levels within normal ranges. But Fu said the gap between those readings and residents’ experiences has deepened distrust.
“At press conferences, people hear there are no fumes, no vapors, no leaks, no contamination,” Fu said. “They say it is safe. Safe for whom? We believe the community when these stories keep coming in.”
Community advocates are urging Garden Grove officials to close the facility and adopt a moratorium on military manufacturing facilities and expansions in the city.
GKN’s more comprehensive air permit application is pending before the South Coast air district, and the public is expected to have an opportunity to comment. A district spokesperson said the agency had planned to release the permit for public review before the end of the year, though that timeline could change because of the emergency.
The incident has also raised questions about whether California’s chemical safety rules leave residents vulnerable when hazardous substances fall outside the state’s strictest accidental release programs.
Methyl methacrylate is a volatile chemical widely used in plastics manufacturing. Officials feared the GKN tank could fail as the liquid overheated, spilling thousands of gallons of chemical material or triggering an explosion.
Andrew J. Whelton, an environmental engineering professor at Purdue University, compared the pressure buildup to “a soda can left in a car in the middle of summer.”
“The pressure inside the can builds beyond what the metal can withstand,” he said.
When the tank began overheating, it set off a chemical reaction that response crews could not stop. Craig Covey, a division chief with the Orange County Fire Authority, said at a May 22 news conference that the reaction had clogged valves crews needed to inject a neutralizing agent.
Methyl methacrylate is not a regulated chemical under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Risk Management Program or California’s parallel accidental release program, known as CalARP. That means the tank may have been covered only by a lower-level hazardous materials program, limiting the regulatory tools available to oversee its storage.
“If you live there, if you are a neighbor, can you go see what chemicals they have stored on site?” asked Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics. “No, you can’t.”
The federal program has not added reactive chemicals to its list of covered substances, despite recommendations from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which investigates chemical accidents. The Trump administration has proposed eliminating funding for the board after October and rolling back 2024 changes to the Risk Management Program that expanded some chemical safety requirements.
California has a similar gap. The California Environmental Protection Agency confirmed to CalMatters that methyl methacrylate is not regulated under the state’s accidental release program.
Orange County health officials said GKN had a hazardous materials business plan, a lower-level document listing chemicals stored at the facility, but did not have a risk management plan. The county said CalARP does not apply to the plant because methyl methacrylate is not on the program’s list of regulated chemicals.
CalMatters also asked the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health whether workplace safety rules for high-risk industrial processes applied to the facility, which could have made it subject to accidental release rules through another route. The facility had been the subject of several occupational safety and health inspections before the tank emergency. Cal/OSHA did not answer the question before deadline.
Williams said chemicals outside federal and state accidental release programs may also be excluded from community emergency planning and drills, leaving nearby residents unsure of the risks or how officials would respond.
GKN did not respond to written questions before deadline. In recent days, the company has thanked the community and emergency responders.
“We recognize that much work remains,” said Steve Carlin, a senior vice president at GKN who oversees programs at the Garden Grove facility.
Angela Johnson Meszaros, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice, said residents near facilities such as GKN have reason to believe regulators are ensuring safety.
When something like this happens, she said, people become angry because they wonder, “Wait, nobody was paying attention to this, and now I’m sleeping on the sidewalk?”
She said the broader regulatory system is aimed at bringing companies into compliance, not necessarily ensuring they are safe enough to operate near dense neighborhoods.
“We have a system built around the idea of getting facilities into compliance,” she said. “But we need a system that ensures they operate safely, and some facilities may not have a culture that allows us to trust them with our lives.”
It remains unclear whether any single agency will produce a full public account of what went wrong.
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office has opened a criminal investigation, spokesperson Kimberly Edds confirmed. Prosecutors sent letters to GKN instructing the company not to destroy or alter evidence.
The office is gathering information through an anonymous tip line about the chemical release, the operation of the facility and the maintenance of the tanks and related systems.
California law makes it a crime to knowingly or negligently handle or store hazardous waste in a way that creates an unreasonable risk of fire, explosion, serious injury or death. Edds declined to say which specific areas of law investigators are examining.
In a similar 2024 case, Alameda County prosecutors charged a scrap metal company after a fire exposed years of alleged hazardous materials violations. Prosecutors later dropped the case, saying they could not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
On the regulatory side, no agency is responsible for issuing one comprehensive report on the Garden Grove incident. Instead, each agency involved in the emergency will prepare its own findings and release them according to its own policies and timeline, said Brian Yau, a spokesperson for the Orange County Fire Authority.
Yau said hazardous materials officials, air quality regulators, environmental officials and the company were developing a cleanup plan for the site. On Friday, the fire authority transferred oversight of cleanup and remediation to the county health agency, fire authority spokesperson Greg Barta said.
Asked whether he was concerned about industrial facilities operating near heavily populated neighborhoods, Newsom praised local and state emergency responders and said the state is reviewing the plant’s safety history. He also acknowledged the difficulty of addressing industrial sites embedded in urban areas.
“When it comes to industrial facilities in and around urban centers,” Newsom said at a Thursday news conference, “that is a more complex geographic issue.”
State Sen. Tom Umberg, a Santa Ana Democrat, said legislation will be proposed in response to the narrowly avoided disaster.
Williams, of California Communities Against Toxics, said the emergency should prompt a broader review of California’s rules for hazardous industrial sites — not only at GKN, but at every facility storing chemicals that fall outside the state’s most rigorous oversight programs.
“Everyone wants to get back to normal as quickly as possible because people’s nerves are frayed, and the way to calm down is to go home, sit on the couch and hug your cat,” Williams said. “But in a situation like this, where such a serious incident occurred, it is critical to make sure the safety systems that failed are not the only ones at risk.”
Original source: CalMatters
