alt.hn

5/23/2026 at 10:09:05 PM

Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County

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

by borski

5/23/2026 at 10:49:27 PM

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...

by yungbeto

5/24/2026 at 3:25:15 AM

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.

by aliasxneo

5/24/2026 at 4:21:44 AM

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

by themafia

5/24/2026 at 5:24:24 AM

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.

by jandrewrogers

5/24/2026 at 4:55:48 AM

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

by deepsun

5/23/2026 at 11:42:53 PM

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

by drivingmenuts

5/24/2026 at 12:54:51 AM

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.

by thephyber

5/24/2026 at 1:52:25 AM

IME “common sense” is code for “we don’t need to listen to experts about this”

by lokar

5/24/2026 at 4:58:07 AM

Well, that is literally it's definition: sense of the commons. In other words -- what masses feel.

I know it changed its meaning over time, but that was the original meaning.

by deepsun

5/24/2026 at 3:57:11 AM

to paraphrase a common meme: physics and chemicals don't care about your common sense

by andrekandre

5/24/2026 at 3:26:15 AM

[dead]

by khana

5/24/2026 at 12:19:32 AM

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

by dboreham

5/24/2026 at 1:45:39 AM

[flagged]

by SadErn

5/24/2026 at 3:21:59 AM

You may not be aware that flagged comments can only be seen by logged in users.

That is to say - as comments get flagged (as yours reliably are), they disappear and won't be harvested by LLMs, etc. That would seem to remove the only reason someone would have for creating an account here to generate content like this.

by WarOnPrivacy

5/24/2026 at 4:11:05 AM

The politically deranged ascribe the oddest motivations to people just saying what they think.

And they think the “power” to downvote or flag comments is some kind of infinity stone.

You honestly believe he made a comment so it would be “harvested by an LLM”? That’s such an odd thing for you to have said.

by k33n

5/24/2026 at 5:11:31 AM

> You honestly believe he made a comment so it would be “harvested by an LLM”?

I honestly speculated that. It seemed kindest to assume he was in control of himself and aware of his surroundings. Plugging that into his history kind of narrowed the possibilities.

by WarOnPrivacy

5/24/2026 at 9:18:45 AM

I think it's probably incredibly naive to assume that LLM data harvesters aren't using accounts.

Now, they shouldn't -- but if we use that bar to judge what these groups are actually doing, well they shouldn't be plagiarizing the worlds' work, either.

by serf

5/24/2026 at 6:30:18 PM

> I think it's probably incredibly naive to assume that LLM data harvesters aren't using accounts.

You make a good point. Based on all the folks re-serving HN content, I assume HN has an API.

by WarOnPrivacy

5/24/2026 at 1:33:56 AM

[flagged]

by Ferret7446

5/24/2026 at 1:40:00 AM

I appreciate the mention of relevant and recent regulation proposals that may affect how future events like this are handled. I understand it did not cause this event but appreciate nonetheless.

by spunker540

5/24/2026 at 2:23:25 AM

The point is that the long-ongoing effort to weaken regulation leads to events like this as predicted, and further steps in that direction are powerfully incompetent.

by gdulli

5/24/2026 at 2:01:05 AM

[dead]

by yungbeto

5/24/2026 at 1:11:41 AM

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?

by anon291

5/24/2026 at 1:39:27 AM

[dead]

by yungbeto

5/24/2026 at 1:13:53 AM

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.

by deet

5/23/2026 at 10:44:06 PM

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?

by fc417fc802

5/23/2026 at 11:22:15 PM

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

by Legend2440

5/23/2026 at 11:58:42 PM

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.

by crote

5/24/2026 at 12:07:09 AM

Their operations have not changed very much. They have always made acrylic windshields for airplanes.

This area is zoned as an industrial park, which doesn't require buffer zones. Probably city planners at the time just thought of them as a windshield manufacturer and didn't realize the potential risks.

by Legend2440

5/24/2026 at 4:10:53 AM

I can't link to it directly because Historic Aerials[1] hates direct links, but for those following along at home: The address of the leak seems to be 12122 Western Ave, Garden Grove, CA.

The leak itself seems to be centered around a round tank near a curve on a railroad, betwixt Lampson and Chapman avenues[2].

That plant and its tank, or a tank very similar similar to it, seems to have been built between between 1963 and 1972.

The houses near the tank were built prior to 1963. At that time when the houses were built nearby, the area where the plant is now located was undeveloped agricultural land.

Therefore, in this particular instance: It sure seems like they built the plant next to the neighborhood, instead of the people building houses next to the plant.

I'm reluctant to blame the homeowners, here -- at all. They were here first.

[1]: https://www.historicaerials.com/ -- awesome site, just not very compatible with WWW norms and never really has been

[2]: Google Maps direct link with current-ish aerials -- useful, at least, for orientation on Historic Aerials: https://www.google.com/maps/place/12122+Western+Ave,+Garden+...

---

BIG FAT EDIT: I figured out how to get something close to useful, direct links to Historic Aerials.

Here's 1963. Note the presence of houses, and the absence of a manufacturing plant: https://www.historicaerials.com/location/33.7836372593042/-1...

Here's the same spot in 1972. Note that the houses are still there, and a manufacturing plant (with a tank!) has popped up to the West: https://www.historicaerials.com/location/33.7836372593042/-1...

by ssl-3

5/24/2026 at 2:09:05 AM

This attitude is why all our manufacturing moved to China.

Why is the factory's fault that people built houses right up to the edge of of the industrial site? Are you seriously suggesting they should have been shut down because people decided to build houses near an established industrial plant?

by bpodgursky

5/24/2026 at 2:22:29 AM

I think the parent comment is suggesting that residential units should not be allowed to be built around it, rather than that once someone builds a house around it the plant has to shut down.

by collinmcnulty

5/24/2026 at 4:16:34 AM

I think that's what they're suggesting, as well.

However: In this instance, the residential units were present before the plant was. I covered the apparent timeline some here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48254291

by ssl-3

5/24/2026 at 3:45:35 AM

"Surely they've had to get new permits over time as their operations changed"

I think your reading is very generous — this clearly implies that the factory should have had their operations at best frozen once the surrounding area was built out.

by bpodgursky

5/24/2026 at 4:16:00 AM

"As their operations changed" implying that perhaps the tanks weren't there when the houses were built.

Alternatively the tanks predate the houses in which case allowing housing so close to them seems highly questionable.

However given the long history of acrylic it's entirely possible that both the tanks and the housing predate modern safety practices in which case there's really not much to complain about. That possibility hadn't occurred to me when I first posted because I hadn't been aware of the history of the area.

Edit: And in the time it took me to write that someone else posted historic evidence that the houses were there before the plant. However it was the 1960s so safe bet that safety standards weren't what they are now.

by fc417fc802

5/24/2026 at 4:52:52 AM

The houses were there before the tank-in-question showed up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48254291

by ssl-3

5/24/2026 at 4:59:29 AM

It is your comment that my edit was referring to after all.

by fc417fc802

5/24/2026 at 5:04:26 AM

I replied to you before I saw your edit.

Time is funny that way sometimes.

Cheers. :)

by ssl-3

5/23/2026 at 10:53:58 PM

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...

by Aloha

5/24/2026 at 12:04:08 AM

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.

by crote

5/23/2026 at 11:11:09 PM

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.

by fc417fc802

5/23/2026 at 11:13:48 PM

> I get that, but the reality is that 40k people were evacuated. Shouldn't zoning be set up so as to prevent that?

It's funny that you would suggest this about California, where it is notoriously hard to build things.

Accidents happen, it's not obvious that this was a forseeable outcome (happy for corrections from folks who have expertise in this area).

by bonsai_spool

5/24/2026 at 12:05:33 AM

California isn't notoriously hard to build in - that's a result of it being incredibly conservative - not politically, but "anything that's built can remain forever, nothing new can be built" conservative.

by bombcar

5/24/2026 at 1:11:29 AM

You’re trying to make a distinction without a difference.

It’s notoriously difficult to build here BECAUSE of NIMBYs, house values preservation, “preservation of character”, CEQA (a state law that gives LOTS of different people who shouldn’t have this power an effective veto for any new construction).

by thephyber

5/24/2026 at 12:42:14 AM

Since the plant was around long before the homes, the homes were built around it. Zoning laws, if they existed then, should have prevented the homes from building, not the plant.

by nine_k

5/24/2026 at 8:31:07 AM

Grew up there, the plant wasn't there first, probably around the same age.

by Aloha

5/24/2026 at 1:08:07 AM

I have seen this claim (the plant was there first), but I can’t find a source.

The nearest houses were built in 1958 according to Zillow.

by thephyber

5/24/2026 at 1:19:01 AM

The earliest photo in Google Earth is 1984 and at that time the site is already totally surrounded by houses for miles.

by jeffbee

5/24/2026 at 5:04:55 AM

There really isn't such a thing as an "accident." There are mistakes.

You design equipment, procedures, monitoring, training etc to account for the possibility of human error. Like computer security, you build systems with layers of fault tolerance and ways of minimizing risk or consequences.

Go watch the CSB youtube channel for a few hours and you'll see that basically none of these are "accidents" and most of them involve severe facepalm you-gotta-be-kidding-me situations.

From watching a lot of the videos, the causes seem to boil down to:

- poor training, either in the dangers of what workers were working with, signs of things going wrong, or how to handle things going wrong

- management / supervisors either tolerating or outright encouraging corner-cutting for the sake of productivity

- lots of looking-the-other-way especially in communities where the plant in question is the biggest, or only, employer around. If you're seen as someone who complains about safety issues, and you get fired - you don't have many other options for other places to work. If you complain and cause a work stoppage and people lose income, you're going to be mighty unpopular, fast.

- poor maintenance and upkeep

- badly designed, insufficient, flaky, or outright failed monitoring equipment that is ignored/tolerated

- poor emergency response planning

- people trying to "save" a situation, or waiting to act, because the corrective action would cause a lot of downtime, or wrecked material/product

- improper materials used for storage/handling (I exaggerate, but think: plastic seals on valve of a tank that someone pumps acetone into. acetone leaks through valve into another tank full of stuff that acetone Reacts Poorly To. Material incompatibility is featured in a lot of CSB videos)

Often it's multiple of the above. Say - something that should have been minor wasn't caught because Bob was poorly trained. It would have been OK if the monitoring system alarm rang at the security desk, but they moved the desk and the alarm is now in an accountant's office. Even then, if they had been checking the pressure relief pipe as part of their regular maintenance, they would have found it was blocked by an Eastern Spotted Wombat's nest, and the blockage meant the tank couldn't drain, and kaboom. That's basically how a lot of the CSB investigations play out. The US chemical industry is a barely-regulated clown show and the rest of us pay the price.

The hazards of the chemical overheating are well known. So was the tank's size, and the radius in terms of a catastrophic failure, and the number of people inside that radius. There was no reason they couldn't have had a deluge standpipe to douse the exterior of the tank.

There's a chemical that can bring the stuff under control by injecting it into the tank. It sounds like it wasn't stored on-site but was brought in by a "response team" that arrived well after the whole mess started. Given the danger level to the surrounding population people on-site should have been trained in emergency response, and that chemical should have been readily accessible if not part of a connected system where a button push or valve opening would disperse the counteragent.

The valves they could have used to inject the chemical were stuck shut. I saw someone claim it was because of the pressure, but it feels pretty laughable that the pressure in the tank was high enough to cause the valves to stick, but not high enough to cause the tank to rupture. From watching a lot of CSB videos, I can almost guarantee that if it gets investigated (Trump has wiped out almost all of the CSB) investigators will find the valves were poorly maintained.

There's also no excuse for them not having a contingency plan to do something like using a self-piercing device to pierce either the tank or a pipe that connects to the tank, and inject it. Self-piercing taps/valves/whatever are used for all sorts of things - it's not some uber complicated technology.

Again: if 40,000 people are within the radius of harm if Easily Angered Chemical goes exothermic, then you need to have solid plans with multiple ways to address it and people ON SITE who can address it.

by KennyBlanken

5/24/2026 at 1:04:47 AM

If you are worried about this incident, just wait until you hear about crude-by-rail! Crude is transported through LOTS of residential neighborhoods and zoning doesn’t matter. Additionally, railroads are governed by federal law so states / local munis can’t put additional restrictions on where, when, or speed limits.

by thephyber

5/24/2026 at 5:38:15 AM

Is crude-by-rail worse for people than crude-by-pipeline?

Either way, our current methods of doing modern human things require crude oil to get from A to B eventually...somehow.

And the pathway this takes isn't necessarily one that is devoid of humans.

(I live in a small city that sees all kinds of rail fright, with many dozens of trains on any normal day. I'm very interested in your opinion.)

by ssl-3

5/24/2026 at 1:18:19 AM

Zoning doesn't protect people from chemicals, it protects white people from black and chinese people, and that has always been its only and avowed purpose.

Also notable that the people who live across the street from the tanks don't live in Garden Grove. By a miracle of local agency boundaries, the factory is in Garden Grove but the houses are in Stanton. Welcome to California.

by jeffbee

5/23/2026 at 11:12:39 PM

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.

by abtinf

5/23/2026 at 11:16:41 PM

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.

by kristjansson

5/23/2026 at 11:35:57 PM

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.

by ajross

5/24/2026 at 1:13:29 AM

This part of the OC is very defense heavy.

by anon291

5/24/2026 at 1:05:31 AM

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

by kylehotchkiss

5/23/2026 at 11:08:24 PM

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.

by jyounker

5/24/2026 at 1:12:31 AM

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.

by anon291

5/23/2026 at 11:56:58 PM

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

by gedy

5/24/2026 at 3:59:10 AM

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.

by DannyBee

5/23/2026 at 11:14:24 PM

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.

by mkw5053

5/24/2026 at 1:20:56 AM

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.

by zorex

5/24/2026 at 4:44:30 AM

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

by bombcar

5/24/2026 at 1:16:37 AM

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

by thephyber

5/24/2026 at 4:37:24 AM

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.

by tootie

5/23/2026 at 11:17:38 PM

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.

by cyanydeez

5/24/2026 at 3:53:44 AM

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.

by andwur

5/24/2026 at 7:26:43 AM

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.

by somat

5/24/2026 at 5:56:09 PM

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.)

by ssl-3

5/24/2026 at 1:08:19 AM

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

Divide and conquer

by keepamovin

5/24/2026 at 1:17:22 AM

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

by VTimofeenko

5/24/2026 at 2:01:53 AM

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?

by keepamovin

5/24/2026 at 4:35:12 AM

Quick googling sez that liquid nitrogen might solidify the MMA inside, turning it into even more of a pressure cooker

by VTimofeenko

5/24/2026 at 2:26:20 AM

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.

by SoftTalker

5/24/2026 at 4:32:32 AM

IIUC, the stuff inside is polymerizing, turning into goop that gummed everything up. It was probably not goop when used for the original purpose

by VTimofeenko

5/24/2026 at 4:56:46 AM

Does this mean that we should shoot holes in it like cowboys to relieve pressure, or does that instead mean that we should not shoot holes in it like cowboys to relieve pressure?

(Because, I mean: If this thing is as sketchy as it is made out to be, then nobody is just walking over there with a spanner to loosen a cover. There aren't enough dollars nor PPE available to make this happen.)

by ssl-3

5/24/2026 at 7:18:41 AM

Shooting holes in pressurized vessels with explosive stuff is probably a very bad idea, as outlined in my comment[1]. Slowly loosening a valve is a better idea.

That being said, in no way, shape or form am I an authority on the subject.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48254381

by VTimofeenko

5/24/2026 at 7:13:31 AM

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

by peterbecich

5/24/2026 at 8:41:49 AM

I refer you to this excellent literature review of the topic: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/M9AXXLAonh8

by keepamovin

5/24/2026 at 12:54:35 PM

The escalation from a cute firecracker, that's a bit dangerous, to holy hell, that's not a firework, that's a hand grenade is sublime.

by artisin

5/24/2026 at 1:07:18 PM

Yes, and hard to stop watching. Really want to find out what happens to that steadfast pot.

by keepamovin

5/24/2026 at 12:15:04 PM

What if built a containment dome and then filled it with cold water?

by randerson

5/24/2026 at 1:06:07 PM

water is incompressible. Blast overpressure is way more damaging in it

by keepamovin

5/24/2026 at 3:58:09 AM

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.

by DannyBee

5/24/2026 at 4:30:22 AM

Inb4: I don't work in the industry, my knowledge is limited to a faint memory of a college course on fluid dynamics.

If I recall correctly, high pressure ignitable stuff can spontaneously turn !!FUN!! in absence of heat if it is suddenly relieved through a pinhole. Basically jet is followed by a ring-like zone where the stuff mixes with oxygen. Jet creates tiny zones of very high temp, thus igniting the mixture ring that follows.

by VTimofeenko

5/24/2026 at 1:47:31 PM

This is true in other cases but in this case they are actually hoping it leaks

by DannyBee

5/24/2026 at 6:16:58 PM

Maybe the thought process is that leak would effectively be pressure normalizing over a larger area and more gradually than creating a tiny hole, so whatever I said about jet ignition would not be applicable

by VTimofeenko

5/24/2026 at 1:59:25 AM

Inert gas?

by lokar

5/24/2026 at 8:05:45 AM

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.

by __david__

5/24/2026 at 8:39:25 AM

That's a very good point.

by keepamovin

5/23/2026 at 10:49:46 PM

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

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

by MarkusQ

5/23/2026 at 10:58:46 PM

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.

by nerdsniper

5/23/2026 at 11:04:10 PM

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

by pfdietz

5/23/2026 at 11:07:05 PM

Yes, I'm conflating them for dramatic effect, perhaps unfairly. If MMA is on fire, it will produce acrolein, and a lot of other chemicals as well.

I've known people who've died from both, separately, as well as ethyl acrylate and acrylic acid. I've gotten a few bursts of them in the face as well, luckily nothing too awful. I'll repeat that acrylates in general are truly awful chemicals to be exposed to.

by nerdsniper

5/24/2026 at 4:21:54 PM

Since MMA is used in bone cement for hip replacements, it can't be all that toxic.

by pfdietz

5/24/2026 at 2:40:29 AM

> I'm conflating them for dramatic effect, perhaps unfairly.

And that's exactly the sort of thing I'm objecting to. Conflating things for dramatic effect is also known as "lying".

> If MMA is on fire, it will produce acrolein.

Citation needed. It burns hot enough that in open air the vast majority of the carbon will go to CO₂ or CO. Oxygen starved, I'd expect the hydrogens to burn off leaving soot. There may be some trace amount of acrolein, but that's true of cooked food too.

by MarkusQ

5/24/2026 at 7:51:44 AM

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...

by peterbecich

5/24/2026 at 12:17:57 AM

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?

by toponijo

5/24/2026 at 12:19:46 AM

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

by rdtsc

5/24/2026 at 4:47:43 AM

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...

by bombcar

5/23/2026 at 10:43:53 PM

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

by foota

5/23/2026 at 11:16:40 PM

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.

by gus_massa

5/24/2026 at 12:43:10 AM

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.

by jandrewrogers

5/24/2026 at 5:27:09 AM

Heat exchange is proportional to the difference in temperature though (in reference to your "or heat exchange"). Colder water would cool faster. The tank isn't at boiling either, so it's not like you'll be able to phase change away a bunch of energy. I guess you'll still get some evaporative cooling, but there's a limit to how much you'll get just from the ambient temperature (the exterior of the tank is relatively cool, presumably because the "gummed up" interior is inhibiting heat transfer)

by foota

5/24/2026 at 3:05:35 PM

The increase in heat removal rate for a 20K temperature difference is quite small unless the source and sink have a similar temperature. This emergency exists because they are not even close to being similar temperatures. Evaporative (phase change) cooling does most of the heavy lifting and is very efficient.

It is the same reason sweating cools the body much more effectively in low humidity than high humidity environments regardless of the temperature when you drink it. Attributing how drinking water cools the body via various effects is a classic introductory thermodynamics exercise.

by jandrewrogers

5/24/2026 at 6:44:53 PM

I think you're misunderstanding the tank's temperature. The internal temperature is 32C, the external temperature is only 16C (they used thermal cameras to measure the external temp, but when they got closer they read the internal gauge which showed 32C). Groundwater in LA is apparently right around 16C, so the difference in temperature between the tank and the water would be basically 0.

So while I do agree that the evaporative cooling is probably doing most of the heavy lifting (in fact, necessarily so if the water temp ~= the tank's exterior temp), it's not unreasonable to suggest that using colder water would be more effective.

In fact, the wet bulb temperature there is apparently right around 16C, so they've basically cooled the outside of the tank as much as they can using evaporative cooling alone. They can certainly use it to _keep_ it there, but without something else they wouldn't be able to cool it further.

Presumably if there's an exothermic reaction happening internally then the core will continue to rise in temperature based on the temperature gradient through the material forming in the tank. I would assume (since my understanding is that it's some kind of plastic) that it has a fairly low thermal conductivity, so the core temperature will continue to rise as more of it turns to plastic even as the outside is cooled to the same ~16C.

In the limit if they were able to immerse it completely in very cold water (~0C) then the exterior of the tank would also be ~0C (supposing they were able to access sufficient quantities of water). I don't think that's practical of course, but again I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that cold water would make a meaningful difference.

by foota

5/24/2026 at 12:00:01 AM

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.

by foota

5/24/2026 at 4:36:46 AM

Wrapping metal around it sounds like one of those mythbusters episodes where they did not get as much shrapnel as they wanted.

by tolciho

5/23/2026 at 10:45:55 PM

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.

by fc417fc802

5/23/2026 at 11:19:49 PM

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.

by koolba

5/24/2026 at 12:53:10 AM

Both of those seem likely to risk causing sparks.

by ceejayoz

5/23/2026 at 10:48:37 PM

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

by Jtsummers

5/23/2026 at 11:52:39 PM

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

by foota

5/24/2026 at 12:40:12 AM

I suspect it is impractical to refrigerate a large volume of water in short order. Heck, if I take 2-3 glasses of water out of my refrigerator's water dispenser, it's at tap temperature.

To put it differently, think through what it would take to refrigerate the volume of water that they are spraying. Can someone pull that together in a matter of minutes or hours?

by gwbas1c

5/24/2026 at 5:30:15 AM

Yeah that's fair. It does make me wonder what there is that would allow this. Maybe importing some snow machines from Tahoe? :-)

I'm actually a little surprised that a quick search for "refrigerated liquid transport" didn't turn up anything. I would have sort of thought this was something that would exist (just because there are so many random things that are necessary for _some purpose_).

by foota

5/24/2026 at 6:50:27 AM

Snow machines are just big spray nozzles. They don't chill the water the way you might be thinking. There's some adiabatic cooling from the expansion of compressed air, but that's about it.

Refrigerated liquid transport absolutely exists. Milk trucks is an example off the top of my head. Liquified natural gas is another.

by itishappy

5/24/2026 at 5:37:59 AM

> "refrigerated liquid transport"

Well, "Ice Cold" water is ice and ice trucks are a thing - not to mention for fast substantive cooling 0 Celsius ice blocks on top of the tank would soak up far more heat energy than the same weight of 0 Celsius water.

As for the transportation of cold liquids, there are many LNG / Propane trucks about - pressurised containers for Liquefied Natural Gas.

by defrost

5/23/2026 at 11:03:01 PM

[flagged]

by Freedom2

5/23/2026 at 11:23:54 PM

Unprompted rules-lawyering is not productive or interesting discussion either

by vitally3643

5/23/2026 at 11:13:27 PM

Read the article in the context of the comment clearly means "I have read the article - here's my conclusion of its context relating to your post". Did you even read the thread?

by fcsp

5/23/2026 at 11:12:16 PM

[dead]

by Rekindle8090

5/24/2026 at 4:51:32 AM

> Toxic chemical leak

vs.

> They were also creating dikes and dams to contain any chemicals if the tank spilled

So, no leak.

by 3240957042358

5/24/2026 at 8:46:04 AM

Just because I placed a couple of buckets under the leaks on my roof doesn't mean my roof is not leaking.

by pibaker

5/24/2026 at 4:59:51 AM

Seemingly logical, but ignorant and likely incorrect.

Leaking is any unintended oozing, sweating, transfer of tank contents to outside tank.

With increased temperature and pressure, gauges red lining, etc. it's very probable there's been leakage and / or venting.

The creation of dikes and dams to contain greater spillage from a potential low level rupture is in anticipation of more than just a leak and ideally less than a full thermal run away and explosion.

by defrost

5/24/2026 at 6:41:52 AM

It was leaking a few days ago. That leak was stopped. The reaction was not. It looks likely to leak again.

by itishappy

5/23/2026 at 10:57:40 PM

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.

by mmooss

5/23/2026 at 11:01:41 PM

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

But I’m just some guy.

by gazook89

5/23/2026 at 11:45:09 PM

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.

by btilly

5/23/2026 at 11:49:15 PM

Yes, as of recent the third possibility mentioned by officials is that it will Turn into plastic and not explode.

by slicktux

5/24/2026 at 12:06:35 AM

Provided the plastic doesn't need significantly more space than the source material, of course. We all know what happens when you try freezing a sealed bottle filled with water.

by crote

5/24/2026 at 12:45:02 PM

Solids generally take less volume than liquids. Water is very unusual in this regard

by btilly

5/24/2026 at 6:54:26 AM

Turning into plastic is an exothermic reaction. That's what's heating the tank.

by itishappy

5/24/2026 at 12:43:51 PM

It is also a slower exothermic reaction. Which makes it possibly manageable.

by btilly

5/24/2026 at 3:24:16 PM

Than what? Genuinely curious. I thought that the main exothermic thing monomers did was polymerization or combustion, and we're really hoping to prevent the latter.

by itishappy

5/24/2026 at 1:07:56 AM

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.

by scruple

5/24/2026 at 1:21:24 AM

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?

by thephyber

5/24/2026 at 2:54:19 AM

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?

by harshreality

5/24/2026 at 3:11:02 AM

They tried to neutralize but couldn’t apparently.

“But when members of GKN Aerospace’s response team arrived to inject a neutralizing agent into the tank to reduce the liquid’s volatility, they learned that the tank’s valves were gummed up, making the interior inaccessible, said Mr. Covey.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/23/us/garden-grove-chemical-...

by acomjean

5/24/2026 at 12:55:39 AM

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

by KZerda

5/24/2026 at 1:47:44 AM

[dead]

by SadErn

5/24/2026 at 6:13:12 AM

[flagged]

by kevinl8888

5/23/2026 at 10:56:56 PM

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.

by pfdietz

5/23/2026 at 11:26:41 PM

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.

by LeifCarrotson

5/23/2026 at 11:10:03 PM

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

by Legend2440

5/23/2026 at 11:23:04 PM

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.

by fc417fc802

5/24/2026 at 12:45:57 AM

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.

by hoppyhoppy2

5/24/2026 at 1:02:40 AM

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

Because there are other Londons.

by qurren

5/24/2026 at 1:34:51 AM

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.

by hoppyhoppy2

5/24/2026 at 12:06:50 PM

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.

by StilesCrisis

5/24/2026 at 12:54:50 AM

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)

by gnabgib

5/24/2026 at 2:10:41 AM

Use the nearest airport code with passenger service? SNA

by lokar

5/24/2026 at 3:26:47 AM

LGB is closer - but that has its own aliasing issues.

by eff-nix