WATER is sprayed on a tank that overheated at an aerospace plant in Garden Grove, Calif., Friday, May 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope).

By Jim Tortolano
Orange County Tribune
with wire service reports

A crisis with a worst-case scenario of a giant chemical explosion is over.

Around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Orange County Fire Authority announced that all evacuations connected to the hazmat incident at a plastics factory in West Garden Grove have been lifted and residents can go home.

That means the OCFA believes that there is no longer any danger of explosion, fire or major leakage or any public health threat.

The sole remnant of exclusion zones will be the strip of Western Avenue between Chapman Avenue and Garden Grove Boulevard to continue to monitor the situation.

The crisis began on Thursday with reports of the leak of toxic chemicals. It prompted the creation of an evacuation zone, which over the weekend was widened and then later reduced.

On Monday, a nighttime mission by the Orange County Fire Authority revealed a leak in a chemical tank at GKN Aerospace which actually helped critical mass within from being developed, preventing an explosion or uncontrolled breach of dangerous fluids.

Then it was further revealed that the hazmat response was triggered by the discovery that the cooling system for the chemical tanks were no longer working, according to an OCFA official.

Falling temperatures in the tanks were a sign that the danger was declining.

For an estimated 35,000 people who were in the evacuation zone in portions of Garden Grove, Anaheim, Stanton and Westminster, the news announced on Monday of reduction of the zone, was good news.
For the remaining 16,000 who remained, the good news came a day later.

The new perimeter was framed by West Ball Road on the north, Valley View on the west, Trask Avenue on the south and Dale Street on the east.

The public and public officials put the blame for the crisis on GKN, located at 12122 Western Avenue. Addressing a large gathering on Tuesday evening at the Garden Grove Community Meeting Center, Mayor Stephanie Klopfenstein said, “We know this has been frightful, stressful and a deeply disruptive experience.”

She added, “I want to be clear on one critical point. There must be accountability for their role in this incident. Our community deserves to know what happened.”

The incident may already have had an impact in Sacramento. On Tuesday the California State Senate passed SB 954 which – according to its supporters – restores “important and public health safeguards” to ensure that major industrial facilities can’t be sited, permitted and constructed without environmental review.

The Garden Grove event was one of three industrial incidents in California this week, one be a tire facility in South Gate and an oil spill in Los Angeles.

In the Garden Grove Unified School District, nine schools which had be shut down during the crisis were reopened when they were placed outside the evacuation zone.

In Westminster, the city council will meet to declare a state of emergency and apply for federal and state assistance.