It was a night of anxiety and questions as people across a wide swath of central Orange County fled their homes due to the risk of a chemical explosion at a Garden Grove aerospace firm.
Some residents went to local evacuation shelters while others opted to stay with family and friends. Among the many questions surrounding the incident, two felt the most urgent on Friday night: How long will the evacuation last? And how safe is their community?
Families evacuated from their homes milled about the lobby and parking lot of the Cypress Community Center late Friday waiting for any updates about the leaking chemical tank that sent them fleeing earlier that day.
Some stayed glued to their phones. Others took inventory of the hastily packed belongings in their trunks or snoozed as comfortably as they could in plastic chairs at the evacuation site.
Jude Thomas and his family were some of the first people evacuated on Thursday afternoon when firefighters first responded to the plant following a report of an issue with the tanks.
They were briefly allowed to return to their apartment that evening, only to receive instructions to leave again early Friday.
Thomas has lived less than a mile from GKN Aerospace for about six years and had never given much thought to their proximity.
Victor Romero, of Stanton, carries his daughter, Victoria, 2, on his shoulders at the evacuation center
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
His son had raised concerns about whether it was safe to live that close to the facility shortly after they moved in, but he dismissed them, he said.
“Everything will change, for sure, once this is done,” Thomas said. “We will think about moving out from there.”
A leaking chemical tank at GKN Aerospace is going to fail or explode in an “unprecedented” event that triggered evacuation orders on Friday for thousands of Orange County residents.
By Friday afternoon, evacuations around the failing tank in Garden Grove expanded to include tens of thousands of residents in six Orange County cities: Garden Grove, Cypress, Stanton, Anaheim, Buena Park and Westminster.
Officials have not said how long the evacuation will last.
Bar manager Miguel Loo, 30, lives about two or three miles away from the leaking chemical plant, and recalls experiencing headaches after getting home at about 3 a.m. Friday morning. He was shopping with his family at around noon in Irvine ahead of his birthday this weekend when they received a notice to evacuate from the city.
“We came back, and half the cars are gone and the other half are leaving all at once,” Loo said. “So we’re trying to evacuate, and I’m getting dizzy with a headache in the middle of it.”
Loo said they managed to gather his mother-in-law’s medication, supplies for their French bulldog, Wednesday, important documents and other essentials. But there were still valuable belongings at their home, and his family was concerned burglars might try to ignore the hazardous chemicals in the air and take advantage of the situation.
Loo and his family were also in the process of arranging shelter while evacuation orders remain in effect. They were considering staying at a hotel, even though prices have been marked up for the Memorial Day Weekend.
“Right now it’s like $200 to $400 for a place that’d normally be 60 or 70 bucks,” Loo said. “Pretty much everything I make this weekend is going to go to that.”
As of 7:30 p.m. Friday, it was unclear whether overnight lodging would be available at the evacuation center set up at the Garden Grove Sports and Recreation Center on Deodara Drive, the city’s community services director, John Montanchez, said. The shelter has been open since 8 a.m., and about 250 people have checked in for aid so far.
“A lot of them are looking for information,” Montanchez said. “Unfortunately, right now the information is changing hour by hour, so it’s kind of hard to keep up. We’ve had the news on the entire time for them… Everyone seems to be in really good spirits. They understand, they’re just kind of sitting around waiting and wondering what’s the next step.”
At her home in Stanton on Thursday, Leticia Rinker, 71, kept thinking she was smelling gas.
She repeatedly checked the burners on her stove. She threw away an old pan, thinking maybe she had burned some grease on it while cooking chicken that day.
Then, her head started hurting.
The smell was still in the air Friday morning when she went for a walk, she said.
“Now I know why I smelled it and why I got the headache,” Rinker said Friday night after evacuating her home while emergency crews frantically worked to stop a damaged chemical tank at GKN Aerospace in Garden Grove from exploding.
Rinker, who is retired, had a long career in the automotive industry. “I know smells,” she added.
Rinker was staying at the evacuation center at the Garden Grove Sports & Recreation Center, with her two pugs, Lulu and Daisy, and her daughter’s two cats, Cedric and Elvis.
She was walking Friday morning at around 11 a.m. when a neighbor called and told her she needed to get the pets and go.
Her daughter and son-in-law, who live with her, were on a trip out of state, so she spent most of the day in her car at the evacuation center with the pets. The evacuees, she said, were remarkably calm, and relief workers fed them “some delicious spaghetti.”
“Everybody’s very relaxed, just chilling, sitting down,” she said. “A lot of people have their dogs. It’s OK, you know? It’s not a chaos thing.”
Still, she said, she had no idea when she could go home and was upset she had not grabbed food for the pets because she did not think she would be gone so long.
“I’m just hanging out in my car,” she said from the evacuation site. “I see no sense in going anywhere and wasting my gas, as high as it is.”
Rinker said she had friends and neighbors who refused to leave.
Rinker has lived in Stanton, near the aerospace manufacturer, for three decades and said she had never experienced anything like this.
“All I need is for my house to explode,” she said sarcastically.
Then, with a sigh: “I’m trying not to think about it. I love my house.”