GKN Aerospace exec apologizes at Garden Grove council meeting for chemical threat, says in early stages considering what’s next

Three weeks after a chemical tank in Garden Grove failed, threatening over the Memorial Day weekend either a poisonous street-level spill or an explosion and toxic plume, the Garden Grove City Council and residents heard directly for the first time from a GKN Aerospace executive at a special meeting.

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“On behalf of GKN and the Garden Grove plant, I want to say I’m sorry this event, this incident occurred. I understand what a disruptive event it was, and how unsettling it is to the greater community,” GKN Aerospace Senior Vice President Steve Carlin said during the Tuesday, June 9 meeting.

Councilmembers had demanded a company representative come to the meeting to address questions swirling since the evacuation that affected some 50,000 residents of Garden Grove and neighboring cities because of the threat from an overheating storage holding 7,000 gallons of the chemical methyl methacrylate, or MMA.

On Tuesday, council members said they now want GKN Aerospace to host a town hall meeting to hear community concerns and provide a timeline for holding such a meeting. Councilmembers asked various questions of Carlin — including whether the company would remove the toxic chemicals from its premises, enforce tighter regulations and directly compensate impacted businesses and residents. 

Carlin agreed to hold a town hall “or some sort of public event” but on the latter questions, offered no specifics or timeline, saying “we are still in the very early stages of evaluating.”

Garden Grove residents have crowded city chambers at multiple meetings since the threat to make clear their abiding concerns, raising previous violations recorded at GKN Aerospace’s Garden Grove plant, including in 2023, when the company received a citation for the overflow of 200 gallons of MMA, a volatile liquid used in plastics manufacturing with the capacity to cause respiratory irritation.

Many called for GKN Aerospace’s shutdown or relocation and for direct reimbursements to evacuated residents and shuttered businesses.

Julian Poyourow lives with his wife on Bently Avenue, in a quiet residential block just yards east of the 15-acre GKN Aerospace facility. Though allowed back into their home after the long holiday weekend, Poyourow was among several residents who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting about feeling unsafe, with one evacuee saying a “feeling of impending doom” persists.

“While removing stabilized MMA is the right step right now, it’s not a plan. It’s a pause,” Poyourow said.

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“Will MMA be stored at this site again? We were lucky once and I’m asking you to make sure our safety never depends on that luck again,” he said. “If GKN’s operations require (MMA), those operations belong somewhere where people don’t sleep.”

Memorial Day weekend should have been about graduation parties, honoring fallen soldiers and enjoying the annual hometown Strawberry Festival, retired GGUSD principal Sandi Ishii said.

“Instead, for Memorial Day weekend, memories will be those of fear, being evacuated and unhoused, and a lingering fear in our youth of ‘could this happen again?’” Ishii said. “GKN is a stone’s throw away from homes, families, children and schools. I ask on behalf of the community, move all your high-risk chemical storage off-site to an industrial area that’s appropriate to house volatile chemicals.”

GKN Aerospace last week donated $3 million to the OC Community Resilience Fund, a partnership of Orange County United Way and 211-OC, which will provide qualifying residents with up to $500 in cash assistance to help recoup evacuation costs.

“We’ll continue to evaluate a number of alternatives, and also, a lot of different alternatives, and figure out ways to better serve the community,” Carlin said. “We continue to do that. At this stage, we choose to go to the United Way for the first stage of this, because of their experience of working in these types of things, and their outreach across all of Orange County. But we are continuing to evaluate different ways to move forward.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, the fund had received “nearly 4,500 applications,” with more than 150 residents receiving financial assistance, OC United Way President and CEO Sue Parks said in a presentation during the meeting.

GKN’s contribution will help approximately 6,000 residents in the evacuation zone, Parks said.

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This is a developing story, please check back for updates.