Transcription
Spill. And good evening, I'm Kathy Vara. Carolyn is off tonight.
The industrial area is still evacuated and streets nearby, they are shut down. NBC 4's Darsha Philips has been on that scene all evening and brings us more now on how this unfolded. Darsha.
Yeah, Kathy, the chemical that spilled is highly flammable and possibly explosive. So the focus for the past several hours was to keep the chemical cool. Thankfully, the Orange County Fire Authority says the operation was successful, but there still is a lot of cleanup to be done.
Residents near the 12,000 block of Western Avenue in Garden Grove were given alarming news. Around 3:30 this afternoon. "I heard there's an unknown chemical spill, so they're evacuating the whole neighborhood. I didn't know what was over here like. I mean, the factories, I didn't know. So they say we could blow up. They're not going to go."
A 34,000-gallon tank containing the highly flammable chemical methylmethacrylate began leaking, sending toxic and possibly volatile vapors into the air. The company actually creates acrylic plastics for the aerospace industry, and that's the reason for the chemical. Residents and businesses within a half-mile in each direction of the spill were evacuated.
The company's sprinkler system and water streams from the Orange County Fire Authority were used to cool the chemical and keep it from reacting. The problem with this chemical is it is a flammable liquid, and it does have exothermic properties.
By 9 p.m., the OCFA said the operation was successful and lifted the evacuation orders. Industrial cleanup crews will now work through the night to offload the chemical. Now, it's not clear exactly what caused the chemical to leak out of its storage tank, the OCFA says. Once the chemical is offloaded, there will be an investigation into exactly what happened. Reporting live tonight.