Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w2l249j8go

by borski • 2 months ago

170 146 2 months ago

foota7• 2 months ago

Is it not possible for them to just... spray it with ice cold water?

fc417fc8026• 2 months ago

They have been doing exactly that for the past 24 hours. However the contents of the tank are polymerizing, that reaction is exothermic, and the tank is quite large.

koolba• 2 months ago

I wonder if they’ll try drilling or shooting a hole into the bottom. A semi controlled leak to disperse it locally. A mess for sure. But better than going up and out.

Jtsummers• 2 months ago

Read the article. They have been doing that, but that is just slowing things down and buying them time.

foota7• 2 months ago

They are not. I said ice cold. I read this article and several other articles about this.

gus_massa• 2 months ago

I guess you ask why they are using water at ambient temperature (20°C; 68°F) instead of very cold water (0°C; 32°F). Some reasons I can think now:

They are using a lot of water, as most as possible, from pipes at whatever temperature it is. There are no enough mobile refrigerators, not enough electricity to make them work, and it's very hard to transport cold water or ice if you don't use the pipes.

Also, the center of the tank is hot and reacting, but the external part is a nasty block if plastic that acts like a shield and isolate it from the cold water outside.

This is a common problems in big chemical plants when you have exothermic reactions. It's not enough to cold it down, you need to ensure all parts are cold down.

For comparison, there is a nice video by NileRed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNLecfyWS8 He is making Bakelite that is a type of plastic. It's a tiny amount, in a lab, on purpose and he may make a few attempts. Anyway it overheat and instead of a nice piece of plastic he got a nasty block of foam with burned plastic. No imagine a huge tank of a similar chemistry reaction.

foota7• 2 months ago

Ah, that makes sense. It's too bad they can't drill into it to relieve pressure without destroying the integrity of the tank (not that I'd want to be anywhere close to it either).

If they didn't have to worry about it imminently exploding I wonder if they could somehow wrap it with reinforcement (e.g., wrap some high strength metal around the tank to prevent it from deforming when drilled into) and then drill into it to extract the liquid?

One of my other less serious ideas was to helilift a Chernobyl style containment structure around it, but I imagine they don't have one of those just sitting around waiting to be used.

jandrewrogers3• 2 months ago

The difference in cooling potential between cold water and water at ambient temperature is minimal. Cooling with water primarily comes from phase change or heat exchange; both can move vastly more heat than a small difference in temperature.

Chilling the water would massively complicate the logistics with a very marginal improvement in heat removal.

fc417fc8026• 2 months ago

I'd be curious how it came to pass that 40k people were living within the blast radius of a plant processing toxic chemicals. Isn't this sort of thing the primary justification for the existence of zoning laws?

Aloha2• 2 months ago

The actual site of the tank is 33.78356416377991, -117.99993897629278 [1] - its in an industrial park, and its not a large scale chemical manufacturing facility.

Its 'light manufacturing' for a company that makes custom formed acrylics for aerospace.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/33°47'00.8%22N+117°59'59.8...

CharlesW• 2 months ago

That being said: https://www.ocregister.com/2026/05/22/disneyland-and-knotts-...

fc417fc8026• 2 months ago

I get that, but the reality is that 40k people were evacuated. Shouldn't zoning be set up so as to prevent that? Light manufacturing in general is fine but it seems like these particular storage tanks might have been a bit too large for that location.

crote3• 2 months ago

Perhaps "light manufacturing" is the wrong classification for this kind of business, then. Most of their neighbors are distribution warehouses, or companies doing machining or sheet metal pressing - if you ask me those are more in line with the definition of "light manufacturing" than the 7,000 gallon runaway exothermic reaction we're seeing here.

thenickdude• 2 months ago

https://xkcd.com/2170/

jyounker• 2 months ago

Imagine how often this situation lie this would be happening without institutions like OSHA or the EPA.

Stuff like this happens in Texas on a fairly regular basis, but it rarely ever makes national news.

rectang• 2 months ago

From what I hear[1], we should be relying on the fact that environmental disasters are bad for business in a true Scotsman "free market".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48238025#48240301

abtinf• 2 months ago

That area has dozens of aerospace manufacturers, building up since before WW2. People wanted to live close to work. There are lots of homes and commercial areas and industrial parks are tightly mixed together.

Source: I’ve worked in aerospace in Orange County.

kristjansson• 2 months ago

Because greater Los Angeles is the USA's (post-)WWII aerospace hub disguised as a megacity and cultural production center? All sorts of folks spent the 40s-00s (scientifically) blowing stuff up in the hills, and manufacturing the resulting products down in the basin and points south. Those businesses needed labor, which needed nearby housing, and here we are.

ajross• 2 months ago

That's... not really a reasonable characterization of LA's urban growth patterns. To begin with, Hollywood quite clearly predates the aerospace buildout in the 40's and 50's. It was an oil production and refining hub before that, and an agricultural shipping center even before the dust bowl.

This particular neighborhood in Orange County certainly looks aerospacey, but I bet the Disney-centered service workers in Anaheim made up just as much of the population as the industrial folks.

Big cities are big for a bunch of reasons, basically. There are no simple answers at this scale.

Legend24403• 2 months ago

The plant has been around since at least the 1970s. At the time it likely was on the edge of town, but through 50 years of urban sprawl, the town grew around it.

It may be even older than that. My source for the age of the site is this 1970 NASA ALSEP supplier list (from the moon program!), which lists the address as an approved manufacturer on page 38: https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/ALSEP/pdf/31111000671279.pdf

crote3• 2 months ago

Surely they've had to get new permits over time as their operations changed? And why didn't the presence of the plant prevent the town from growing around it?

There's a home 430 feet away from it. At that point you didn't even try to create a buffer zone.

gedy• 2 months ago

Doesn't that mean they can bike to work there?

kylehotchkiss• 2 months ago

It should have been in the disclosures for all the home purchases at least, but renters don’t get those (maybe they should?)

anon2913• 2 months ago

As someone whose childhood home is in the evac zone ... It's a bit crazy I was living in this neighborhood my entire childhood just waiting for this to go boom

That being said California is very industry friendly and all the stuff about overregulation is from people who don't get California.

motxilo• 2 months ago

Watch this https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090586/

yungbeto• 2 months ago

Worth mentioning that in February the EPA proposed to severely deregulate chemical facilities like the one in Garden Grove, gutting third-party audits, hazard reporting, and public transparency requirements. They titled it the ‘Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention.’ The public comment window closed just eleven days before this disaster…

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-24/pdf/2026-0...

drivingmenuts• 2 months ago

Yeah, what this administration calls common sense is more like dumbass sense than anything else. On almost every level.

dboreham• 2 months ago

It's common sense if you're trying to make more money and are a psychopath.

thephyber7• 2 months ago

To zoom out, there’s a HUGE percentage of the US who uses “common sense” as a catch-all excuse to end all discussion.

In the debates I watch, they typically don’t have the mental capacity to steel man the opposition’s position so they can’t comprehend that someone else has a different intuition / “common sense” than them.

Beyond that, “common sense” has become a dog whistle to both virtual signal / vice signal to like-minded in groups and to deride outgroups. In a way, using that phrase is a way to dehumanize the person they are talking to.

0xy2• 2 months ago

The Biden era EPA covered up the East Palestine disaster by backdating policy changes to make the spill look less bad for the administration, didn't they? That's what an EPA whistleblower alleged.

anon2913• 2 months ago

It's not like chemical spills didn't happen before these changes though. Let's not sensationalize. Can you directly link the change in policy t this leak?

aliasxneo• 2 months ago

From what I understand, this gutted the 2024 additions which effectively returned it to the pre-2024 regulations. The EPA also cites a ~45% reduction in accidental releases from 2014–2023.

Not saying the 2024 changes were not justified, but your comment makes it seem like we're going back much farther in time.

themafia• 2 months ago

Once I learned that sugar dust can literally _detonate_ I stopped being a Libertarian.

Also the USCSB is one of my favorite federal institutions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg7mLSG-Yws

deepsun2• 2 months ago

Also wheat flour. And grains like wheat can catch fire, so they sprayed with tons of water while loading on a ship.

jandrewrogers3• 2 months ago

Sugar dust does not “literally detonate”. The term you are looking for is “deflagrate”. Sugar is not a high explosive.

All carbohydrate powders have this property. We’ve had grain elevator explosions for as long as we’ve had grain elevators. Demonstrating this with bread flour was an old schoolboy trick. An extremely wide range of ordinary dusts and powders will work.

Dust explosions are the far more improbable solid phase equivalent of a gas leak explosion.

0xy2• 2 months ago

How did these EPA regulations help prevent the East Palestine disaster?

Didn't an EPA whistleblower credibly accuse the fully regulated EPA of a coverup including backdated policies in that incident?

Sounds like a better system, coverups, corruption and incompetence.

MarkusQ2• 2 months ago

More fire / explosion risk than the "toxic cloud engulfs city" rhetoric people have been spreading.

https://www.fishersci.com/store/msds?partNumber=AC127140100&...

nerdsniper2• 2 months ago

I used to manufacture methylmethacrylate, as well as acrolein (which is often co-produced with MMA). These are among some of the more toxic chemicals currently manufactured in the USA.

Acrylates in general are truly awful. Our guys died with their faces boiling and breathing in their own vomit while also still vomiting. From a relatively brief exposure.

A bigger public risk of MMA is actually the extremely low odor threshold (in the parts per billion). The god-awful smell can make an area temporarily "unlivable" even below any known health thresholds. And it affects very large areas, because of the very low odor threshold.

pfdietz3• 2 months ago

Acrolein is about 300x more toxic than methyl methacrylate in rats. Was this unfortunate victim exposed to acrolein?

pfdietz3• 2 months ago

The LD50 of methyl methacrylate in rates is 7-10 g/kg. In comparison, the LD50 of table salt in rats is 3 g/kg. So it's not a highly toxic chemical.

Legend24403• 2 months ago

It is however highly flammable and potentially explosive when sealed in a tank, which is the main concern.

fc417fc8026• 2 months ago

And then we need to consider the byproducts produced when it burns - both nominally as well as the sort of extremely dirty incomplete combustion an explosion would produce.

LeifCarrotson• 2 months ago

It's neurotoxic, a respiratory irritant, and an eye irritant.

No, if it's injected in your bloodstream it won't immediately kill you, but if you inhale a few milligrams of vapor you'll wish you could cough up a lung.

Also, the vapors are heavier than air, so if you fall in a ditch near the hypothetical blown tank you would likely suffocate and die.

mmooss• 2 months ago

They say it will fail for sure, either leak or explode.

I wonder why they can't drain the tank into another facility. Maybe they just lack an appropriate container.

gazook89• 2 months ago

I believe they are having issues with the valves, from what I’ve read.

But I’m just some guy.

btilly4• 2 months ago

They are having valve problems. One of the possible reasons is that it may be turning into a solid plastic.

If so, that could be one of the best outcomes. As long as it does not blow up before the process completes.

KZerda• 2 months ago

The valve's jammed, so they can't really pump things in or out.

scruple• 2 months ago

I live nearby, I'm hosting some family at my home who have been evacuated. A fireman friend who has been to the site said the same. That it'll either explode or spill and they're banking on it spilling.

thephyber7• 2 months ago

Many people have already mentioned that officials have stated the valve isn’t working.

But also, the chemical is actively undergoing an exothermic reaction (which is why the tank is at risk for failure). How do you transport such a toxic fluid without putting much more of the public at risk?

harshreality• 2 months ago

If you can get it out of the tank, you can prevent further runaway polymerization by adding an inhibitor like hydroquinone.

I don't understand why a storage tank for this stuff doesn't have an injection port, independent from any other pipes or valves, that could be used to add an inhibitor. Maybe it does and it's broken (clogged with PMMA from the reaction) as well?

mkw5053• 2 months ago

Where are all of the humanoid robots? Get them in there with whatever the oil and gas industry uses for tapping pipes/containers under pressure. I'm only half kidding.

cyanydeez• 2 months ago

despite all the replace humans IT delusion, we're pretty much still the same civilization that uses steam to generate most energy. The AI emperor has no clothese.

thephyber7• 2 months ago

It’s not simply that the tank might explode. That is one hazard, but spilling the chemical is another serious hazard.

zorex• 2 months ago

That's the same question a lot of people had during the Fukushima disaster in 2011. People were trying to contact Honda to convince them to send their ASIMO robot to shut off valves that could not be accessed by humans. That was well beyond it's capabilities. ASIMO was designed for the stage, not for a disaster zone. No one had the know-how to build such a robot.

Flash forward to today, we are still in quite the same position where robots can do fancy, flashy tech demos, but when it comes to doing something useful that is also unpredictable, the know-now is still not there. Even teleoperation is not a robust answer to this yet, it still has some maturing to do.

bombcar5• 2 months ago

A robot useful for these kinds of things would look much more like Simone Giertz's contraptions than a futuristic humanoid thing.

andwur• 2 months ago

Standing a safe distance away, flanked by their union rep robots who refused to let their members go to work in such dangerous conditions.

Unfortunately we can't force them to go in either. They threatened to pull the entire humanoid robot workforce if we try...

On a more serious note however, I'm surprised there aren't off-the-shelf remotely operated rigs for assisting with this sort of situation: highly flammable/explosive chemicals under pressurised containment that need relief.

tootie• 2 months ago

Humanoid robots remain almost completely useless. We do have bomb disposal robots but they are not humanoid. They also are only designed for explosive devices not giant tanks. Or power tools.

bombcar5• 2 months ago

To be fair we discovered you can strap a bomb to a bomb-disposal robot and make a remote controlled bomb.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/robot-delivered-lethal-...

toponijo• 2 months ago

They talk about the possibility of a spill going into the environment, but if they know it might spill, can't they make it spill and capture it?

rdtsc• 2 months ago

They are building a dam around it I read in one of the news releases maybe the one linked above

bombcar5• 2 months ago

It seems this particular failure mode wasn't even considered - most large "chemical" tanks are required to have spill walls (basically a berm around the tank that could contain the contents of the tank) - sample model: https://www.walthers.com/wide-oil-storage-tank-w-berm-kit-ta...

hoppyhoppy22• 2 months ago

I love how the current title of this post just assumes that everyone lives in California.

There are other "Orange County"s in the U.S.

gnabgib• 2 months ago

It used to say CA which is even worse.. given that's a country code (not where this Orange County is), and also means various things in other countries.. the state of California for people who live in the US, for example. What are you thinking; US-CA-OC? (We're starting to look a little ISO)

lokar3• 2 months ago

Use the nearest airport code with passenger service? SNA

bombcar5• 2 months ago

Ontario, CA is a thing. Two things, actually, I guess.

https://www.ontarioca.gov

qurren• 2 months ago

Do you get angry when someone mentions London that they didn't specify that it is London, England?

Because there are other Londons.

hoppyhoppy22• 2 months ago

Thank you for your interest in my emotional states, and you make a good point. However, I don't think these situations are the same.

In terms of population, the biggest London is 9.1 million people and the 2nd-biggest is under 500,000. Quite a big difference! I think that's why when someone says "London" one can usually reasonably assume they're talking about the one in England, unless otherwise specified (or unless they live near a different one).

The biggest Orange County is 3.1 million and the 2nd-biggest Orange County is 1.4 million, so the difference is not nearly as great. I'd even suggest they're in the same general category of size. In the context of a national/international website, it's far less clear that one of the "Orange County"s is so overwhelmingly what people refer to that its state need not be specified.

StilesCrisis• 2 months ago

I live in a different Orange County, and this does not bother me in the least. Context matters! Headlines aren't supposed to have every detail in them.

jakzurr• 2 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Grove_chemical_leak

keepamovin6• 2 months ago

Why can’t they drill it and pipe it off into some drainage pipe for cooling or collecting in trucks?

Divide and conquer

VTimofeenko6• 2 months ago

Drill = spark = boom = nasty stuff all over surrounding area

lokar3• 2 months ago

Inert gas?

keepamovin6• 2 months ago

Righti didn’t realize It was explosive like that but it really is

Flash point 2 °C (36 °F; 275 K) Autoignition temperature 435 °C (815 °F; 708 K) Explosive limits 1.7%-8.2%

Drilling is too risky then. What about dumping liquid nitrogen on the thing until it’s doused?

SoftTalker• 2 months ago

It's possible to drill or cut without creating sparks. Just need to control the speed of the cutter.

Besides, tanks like these have various portholes, valves and drains already. The article mentions an "inoperable valve" so maybe that's the problem but I'd be surprised if there were just one. They must have been getting the contents out of the tank and into the manufacturing process somehow.

DannyBee4• 2 months ago

The standard choice for MMA processing is actually stainless steel, because carbon steel/iron/etc scavenge the inhibitor used to prevent thermal runaway. HDPE would work, and often how it is transported in drums, but for actual processing, everything would normally be spec'd as stainless steel.

Which, of course, is pretty spark resistant to begin with.

Even if this wasn't true, this is not a hard problem, you can use non-sparking tools, proper coolant, lots of things to avoid sparks.

Or you know, we could require that highly flammable materials subject to thermal runaway have "drill here in case of emergency" patch of non-sparking material or something.

The cost of ATEX/Class 1 Div 1 compliance would not really go up if you required this.

peterbecich2• 2 months ago

What about airlifting a containment vessel on top of it? To lessen the impact of an explosion?

__david__• 2 months ago

In addition to possible ignition through the sparks, it's apparently stored under high pressure, so you can't make a hole without completely compromising the structural integrity which is pretty much guaranteed to kill the driller.

keepamovin6• 2 months ago

That's a very good point.

deet• 2 months ago

If you would like to learn more about these types of incidents, the US Chemical Safety Review Board has a fantastic series of videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB

They explore the root causes of historical accidents. Importantly, they do it from a broad perspective: not just the chemistry, but the human factors, the decision making, and the process failures that led to the accident and how to prevent such things in the future.

DannyBee4• 2 months ago

MMA (this stuff) hardens when exposed to sunlight. The tank and valves are outdoors.

I would not be surprised to learn that is why the pipes/valves/etc are "gummed up" (to use the term from the article) - people who touch the valves/etc probably have mma on their hands/gloves, and then because those are outdoors, it eventually hardens.

Or something similar.

somat• 2 months ago

I was poking around the small town of Sinclair in Wyoming. This is basically the company town for the large refinery there and in the park there are two old cannons with the sign stating that they were originally bought by the company to be used in the event of a refinery fire. They wanted a way to puncture over heating tanks so they wouldn't explode.

ssl-37• 2 months ago

Fantastic stuff.

I poked around on Google and found a brief write-up and some photos of those cannons: https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=89707

(Also fantastic in an old-web way: It includes a page hit counter. It currently shows 801 for all time, and 29 for the year.)

peterbecich2• 2 months ago

Chemistry question: is there any advantage to preempting the possible spontaneous explosion with a controlled explosion? This controlled explosion would happen when the MMA is in a less volatile state, perhaps.

Second question: would it be futile to lift a containment vessel over the tank? Would a containment vessel of sufficient strength be too heavy to lift? For starters I'm thinking of a shipping container...

Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

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