16,000 People Are Still Sleeping Away From Home Because of a Leaking Tank at an Aerospace Factory
Some people have been sleeping in hotel rooms since last Thursday. Others are on relatives’ couches, waiting on a situation nobody gave them a real timeline for.
This started as a malfunctioning industrial tank at an aerospace plant. It became one of the largest forced evacuations Orange County has seen in modern history.
And for 16,000 families living closest to GKN Aerospace’s Western Avenue facility in Garden Grove, the wait is not over yet.
The Tank That Started Everything
On May 21, 2026, a 34,000-gallon storage tank at GKN Aerospace’s facility began overheating. Inside: methyl methacrylate, or MMA, a highly flammable and volatile chemical used in acrylic plastics and aircraft manufacturing…