Overheated chemical tank in southern California ‘will fail’, EPA chief says

Government officials in Orange county, California, have warned that an overheated chemical tank “will fail” and could result in a chemical explosion in the area, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator said on Sunday.

“We’re being told that the tank will fail, but there are different scenarios as to what that means,” Lee Zeldin, told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. Zeldin, a former Republican congressman with no prior experience in environmental policy, was chosen by Trump as the head of the EPA.

“The most catastrophic scenario” in the chemical crisis at a facility just 5 miles from Disneyland in southern California, Zeldin said, would be “an explosion that results in other tanks to explode. That’s the reason why you see such a big evacuation that’s been done in the surrounding areas.”

Zeldin noted that officials have said the “most likely scenario” is one with a “low-volume release” of the chemicals in the tank. Officials have been working to keep the temperature of the chemical tank below 85F by dumping the storage tank with water. On Friday, officials added a neutralizing agent to a nearby tank to limit the risk of explosion.

About 50,000 people in the area have now been evacuated from their homes so far given concerns of a possible leak or explosion. Stephanie Klopfenstein, Garden Grove’s mayor, warned residents to take evacuation orders seriously. “This is a very dangerous situation,” she said on Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported. Agencies in Los Angeles county have said that there is “no current threat to LA County communities”, in a post to X on Sunday.

No significant changes in the situation were seen overnight into Sunday, said Brian Yau, the Orange county fire authority captain, to the Orange County Register.