The Orange County Board of Supervisors met in special session on Friday to hear firsthand testimony on the recent incident in Garden Grove that has put many residents, especially those directly affected by the incident, into a tizzy.
Three residents showed up Friday to give the board their impression of how the incident was handled.
One local resident, Dawn Thomas, questioned the decision to continue the evacuation long after officials reportedly discovered the cracked tank.
“Never should the incident have gone outside the first range,” she said, meaning the evacuation zone. “I can’t even imagine that the people working with this product would not know what the impact would be,” she told the Supervisors.
Orange County Fire Authority Chief T.J. McGovern gave no apologies for the evacuation, giving the Supervisors a frank assessment of what they found upon arrival.
“We had three major events going,” he told the board, “the first one was a potential for a massive explosion that we referred to as a Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion (BLEVE), that’s because the chemical was a in a compressed cylinder building pressure,” he said.
“The second concern we had was the fire problem or a smaller explosion, and the last one was a catastrophic spill, so we had to mitigate the BLEVE,” he said. “Our biggest concern was this substance is in a liquid form, it goes through a polymerization state, and it becomes a solid,” McGovern told the board.
“But what occurred was that the cooling mechanism failed, for what reasons we don’t know,” he said. “The temperature was increasing, so we had an unstable temperature increasing, and when you have pressurization with a liquid increasing temperatures, that is a recipe for a BLEVE, so we had to look at evacuation zones,” McGovern said.
Specialists, on scene, “showed us the (potential) blast radius,” he added.
“When we got there, the plant project manager said ‘there’s nothing we can do. It’s either going to have a major explosion or a catastrophic spill and there’s no other situations we can do,’” he testified.
“As first responders, firefighters and police officers, that was not acceptable to us,” said McGovern, giving the Supervisors a point by point revisitation of the actions they took and why they did so.
County health officer Dr. Regina Chinsio Kwong, who was on-site at the incident command post, said the potential of a BLEVE did cause significant concern to health officials.
“During the first initial days when we learned about this chemical and the potential for it to vaporize or for a BLEVE to occur, where then the vapors would go into the air, we are really concerned because MMA (methyl methacrylate) is highly flammable and toxic that when it vaporizes and you get in contact with it, it causes a lot of irritation to your skin your eyes and especially the respiratory tract,” she said.
“And while it is an inconvenience as a physician and looking over the health of Orange County, the last thing I want is to be responsible for people losing their lives over something that could have been prevented,” she said,
“So yes, I was part of the incident command that made the decision to support expansion of the evacuation zone as soon as we found out that there were only two potential outcomes,” said Dr. Kwong.
“Time was ticking and we needed to make decisions fast,” she said.
Supervisor Vince Sarmiento said there will be time in the future to perform a more thorough “autopsy” on the actions taken yet acknowledged the concerns of residents “who probably didn’t expect to spend their Memorial Day weekend the way they did, so we certainly ask for their grace.”
“I also had the opportunity to visit some of those evacuation centers,” he said, “and there were people who were not only physically stressed but emotionally stressed.”
“When you go through a moment like this you really don’t know what to expect, so you know as I kept saying you plan for the worst but you hope for the best so I think that’s the approach everybody took to try to be as careful as possible in an abundance of caution because we could be having a much different conversation right now if things would have gone wrong,” said Sarmiento.
The Supervisor said that there is “little doubt” that we can improve, however, “I think the collaboration that was shared was remarkable to see.”
He thanked Board Chairman Doug Chaffee for so quicky signing an emergency declaration.
Supervisor Don Wagner had high praise for everyone involved.
“We evacuated a city,” Wagner said. “Nobody was injured. Nobody died. This was done under the threat of a potentially imminent explosion. There was no looting.”
He paused and repeated. “No looting. In an emergency that displaced 50,000 people over Memorial Day weekend, including people who left everything behind and had no idea when they’d return, there was no looting,” he said.
“If the tank explodes,” he said, “then we’ve got a multi-block radius of damage — what these crews did was just absolutely remarkable.”
Supervisor Katrina Foley urged GKN to get a claims process “up and running” as soon as possible. “We know from the experience of the oil spill that the faster they get the claims process up, they’re going to save a lot of money because look, there’s a lot of attorneys circling the wagons right now.”
Supervisor Janet Nguyen, in whose representative district the Garden Grove incident occurred, and who virtually camped out at the incident command center, first thanked key agencies from air monitors to transportation whose personnel stepped in and handled many side issues caused by the incident.
“They showed up,” she said, “and did the heavy lifting.”
She thanked her district staff, who had worked “the entire weekend,” and even her sons, whom she said, “helped put up beds.” County officials quickly approved shower facilities, knowing they cost tens of thousands of dollars per day, she said, while internet companies showed up to provide wi-fi and charging stations for the shelters.
Within 30 minutes of a phone call to the Governor’s Office, Bolsa Chica State Park was opened for RVs, said Nguyen.
“I’ve never been behind the scenes on stuff like this,” she said. “I would never wish to be,” said Nguyen, “but to see it — it’s amazing what we, as Orange County, can do when we come together.”
Chaffee said at some point, “This whole thing will be subject to intense investigation.” Various processes will be set up, he suggested, for residents to be reimbursed for hotel bills and other costs.
The Board Chairman asked County Emergency Operations Center executive Michelle Anderson about the process by which various government entities will be reimbursed for their costs.
All of the local agencies and jurisdictions have internet access to a Council EOC portal, said Anderson, and she has asked that they use the system to input their incident expenditures by June 3.
With the county, state and federal emergency declarations, Anderson said the county will seek Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reimbursement for up to 75% off emergency response costs only. Individuals displaced from their homes, businesses shut down by the evacuation order, workers who lost a week’s income: their claims would go to the responsible party, she said.
Although it was not discussed during the meeting, other communities like the City of Cypress have set up their own fund to assist evacuees (see related story).