McGovern launches all-night Bleve Explosion mission in Garden Grove
TJ McGovern said late Sunday that crews would run an all-night bleve explosion mission in Garden Grove to determine whether pressure inside a volatile tank had been released. The Orange County Fire Authority interim fire chief said the effort aimed to eliminate the threat after the tank climbed to 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
McGovern posted the message just before 9 p.m. Sunday and told residents, “We are not there yet,” as crews kept working inside the evacuation zone. He said the operation was meant “to confirm that the pressure in the tank has been released and that the BLEVE threat is eliminated.”
TJ McGovern’s Sunday deadline
McGovern described BLEVE as “the worst-case catastrophic event that we’ve been talking about.” He also told residents, “We need to run this operation tonight. Please help us. Stay out of the evacuation zone. Let us run our operation, and tomorrow we will be giving you an update on what occurred this evening.”
The tank involved is a failing pressurized Orange County tank filled with a toxic chemical and at risk of exploding. Officials have said the goal is to bring the tank temperature down to 50 degrees, while they have not made public the temperature that would trigger an explosion.
Orange County tank temperatures
The temperature rise gave crews a narrow margin. Officials said the tank was 77 degrees on Friday, 90 degrees on Saturday morning, and 100 degrees on Sunday. State Sen. Tom Umberg said Sunday evening, “The tank was at 100 degrees, or at least that’s as high as the thermometer would go.”
Earlier comments from Orange County Fire Authority division chief Craig Covey described the response threshold in procedural terms. “We also have a set temperature where, when it reaches that point, we know the tank is going into thermal runaway, and we’re going to pull everybody out of the area, make sure it’s safe, and let the tank do what it’s going to do,” he said.
Sunday morning crack
Firefighters overnight detected a potential crack in the tank that could potentially be relieving some of the pressure in it. On Sunday morning, Lee Zeldin said the most likely scenario was “one of a low volume release, where the local authorities are going to be able to monitor, neutralize and contain the threat.”
The overnight mission was the next step after days of concern around the tank, which had already prompted mass evacuations in Orange County. By asking residents to stay out of the evacuation zone while crews worked through the night, McGovern set the immediate boundary for anyone still near the area: keep clear until the update he promised for Monday.
