California chemical tank has cracked causing state of emergency, thousands to evacuate

An aerial view of water being sprayed onto an overheated 34,000-gallon tank at GKN Aerospace on May 23, 2026 in Garden Grove, California. A malfunctioning tank at an aerospace plant has the potential of a chemical leak or explosion. Apu Gomes/ hide caption toggle caption Apu Gomes/ Some 50,000 residents of Garden Grove, California remain under an evacuation order Sunday as emergency response teams struggle to deal with a potentially explosive situation at a nearby aerospace manufacturing plant. Here's the latest on what's happening at the plant, and what could yet come. Overnight, the chemical tank appeared to have cracked The tank, which is located in the southeastern corner of the GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove, California, holds somewhere around 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate, a highly toxic, highly flammable chemical used in the manufacturing of resins and plastics. Late Saturday, firefighters approached the tank to "get eyes" on what was happening, TJ McGovern, interim county fire chief for the Orange County Fire Authority, said in a post on social media. "What they found was a potential crack in the tank." A cracked tank could actually be good news, sort of The incident at GKN Aerospace began Thursday, according to emergency responders. It remains unclear exactly what went wrong, but the chemicals in the tank began to exceed a safe temperature. …