Transcription
Emergency crews in Southern California are racing to try to keep a toxic chemical tank from exploding. Hazmat teams worked all night to determine the depth of a new crack that potentially could ease pressure and help prevent a leak or explosion. They also learned that temperatures inside the tank reached at least 100 degrees, and they are unsure at what point the highly flammable chemical might explode and ignite. The situation has forced around 50,000 people to already leave their homes for emergency shelters or hotels.
The interim Orange County Fire Chief TJ McGovern, is joining us right now. He's going to be joining us in a minute. Orange County is home to more than 3 million people, one of the largest counties in the state. Chief, is the explosion threat still present right now?
The explosion threat is. But what crews did last night, we did another mission last night. And an operation. And what we're happy to report. The threat of a BLEVE has been eliminated. That's something we went after last night. So what we can report now is the threat of a BLEVE has been eliminated. There's still a threat, of an explosion or the. The incident is not under control yet. But we really went out to the threat of a BLEVE, and we mitigated that. And we're happy to report that.
So tell us what a BLEVE is. So that's a Boiling Liquid Evaporating Expanding Vapor Explosion. So basically what that is, it's it's a substance in a contained tank that is pressurized and there is an ignition. And in that pressurized cylinder, that would be a BLEVE, very, very dangerous to first responders. We've had a lot of these in the nation right now, and it's usually a catastrophic event when that occurs. That was our concern from the get go. And like I said, I'm happy to report that that now has been, abolished. So that's no longer on the table.
Yesterday. The temperature inside the tank is, you know, reached at least 100 degrees. That's the maximum that the gauge would register. What is the latest you could tell us about the temperatures, the pressures inside the conditions at the scene. How worried should folks in Orange County, California, where there are some 3 million people living there, including Disneyland right now? Be.
So, yeah, as far as the temperatures go so early on in the incident, we couldn't get close because we had to pull everyone out and all we can get temperature readings were from our drones. Are you I said, from an external of the tank. So that's the only thing we can, we were using because the internal gauge, the visualization of the display, we couldn't see it because we couldn't get close. After the last two nights of these night operations. We were able to visualize the tank, temperature gauge, two nights ago, and it was pinned at 100. The gauge doesn't go past 100. But last night, on our second night, operation, we were able to get crews in there and actually start looking inside the tank, peeling some of the material away, and we noticed the internal temperature reading was in the 90s, significant decrease. And that's what we were looking for. So as of last night and throughout the night, that temperature has decreased from somewhere 100 and above down in the 90s. So that's a positive deflection that the cooling measures are working. And after some of that, operational last night, we're able to take some of the sheathing and the insulation. We're pulling it back. So we're able to get our hose streams closer to the entire internal shell to keep those cooling measures in place. So with the threat of a BLEVE eliminated, the temperature is decreasing. These are very positive enhancements that we've had over the last two nights.
And very quickly, chief, before I let you go, if you have loved ones in that, Orange County area, at what point do you think they should start leaving?
So we sent out, evacuation, zones immediately mandatory evacuations. So we've had our residents out for a couple days now. And our goal, we understand what they're going through, and our goal is to get them back in their homes, get them back to their normal life. But we can't do that until the threat of life safety has been completely eliminated. So after the last two nights of our operations, we are working on getting them back. We're not there yet. We still have some more work to do. We're still vetting and validating all the information we received yesterday, but we definitely are working on a plan trying to get them back. But our evacuation zones are still in place. But we're actively working on that, and there'll be some more information throughout the day coming forward.
CNN's Veronica Miracle joins us live now from the city of Cypress. So, Veronica, as I understand it, there is a crack potentially in the tank and that has released a significant amount of pressure. The threat of an explosion could exist, but likely not as devastating as what had been feared.
Yeah, that's exactly right. Zain. Crews have been working overnight, and we've all been waiting here to hear how that overnight mission went. And this really is the best case scenario news, because the other alternative would have been that the crack, did not release any pressure. It didn't receive any pressure. And then the possibility of a catastrophic explosion would still be on the table. What we're being told is that the crack has eliminated pressure, that it's been significantly reduced in terms of that tank exploding, a more catastrophic vapor explosion that essentially is off the table. The threat of an explosion still existing here. However, the other good news that they found is that the temperature inside the tank is also decreased to 93 degrees. It had, over the weekend maxed out at 100 degrees, where the authorities want this chemical to be sitting is around 50 degrees. So it's still a long ways to go, but it's trending in the right direction. So in terms of people being able to come home, there's about 50,000 people still under evacuation orders. And we are told that the evacuation orders, those are still holding until the threat for any life, any damage is completely removed. So that is somewhat bad news. There are so many people who have been forced to leave with a moment's notice, and they've been severely impacted. Take a listen to what one evacuee had to say earlier.
I'm scared because I don't know what's going to happen. And and I don't know if anything that already is in the air is going to affect us. Or if it if it blows, what's going to happen? You know, that's the unknown is really scary. We got an evacuation notice and we had to to get out, you know. So we did. I've worked in refineries my entire life, so I know the dangerous chemicals that they're talking about.
And saying it should come as no surprise that there have already been lawsuits filed. At least one couple. They have filed the lawsuit, and the lawyer there says, the lawyer representing them says that they filed it as a class action lawsuit, and a couple hundred people are expressing interest in joining it at this point. The company at the center of this crisis, GK and Aerospace, they have put out a statement apologizing, say they are working with first responders to mitigate this crisis. About 800 local and state responders are here on the scene trying to resolve this issue as quickly as they can. And as soon as we have more updates, of course we'll bring them to you.
I feel really stressed out because I'm not sure what the future has to tell for us. I don't know how long this is going to be, how long we're going to have to be displaced, where we're going to be. If we're going to have the money to be able to provide for our kids and our family.
Joining me now is CNN senior national security analyst Juliette Kayyem. And you just heard the voice of someone there from Huntington Beach, California. Can you talk about this kind of how to warn people how long they need to stay away from their homes? How do emergency officials think of this kind of thing?
Yeah. So toxic chemical leak is scary. It's a chemical called MMA. It's quite dangerous to the respiratory system. So basically what happened is they found one particular tank on this facility was was too hot. That's not good. And and the worst news for them was the pressure was increasing inside the tank. So they were worried about an explosion. They then evacuate appropriately 50,000 people. It's a huge evacuation. Governor Newsom of California has declared an emergency. The good news, as you noted, is that, you need to release the pressure in the tank to make sure it doesn't explode while doing so, that there was no leaks. And that's basically the tension they have right now. It appears overnight nothing obviously catastrophic happened. So it might be that the reducing the pressure in the tank lower the temperature and then figure out what the what the problem is. But people will not be able to reach until they know that this, that this is not going to be catastrophic.