Stanton resident Darnella Ferguson stood in a queue of her peers for more than an hour in a local ballroom Tuesday night to ask directly, for the first time, safety questions of GKN Aerospace executives.
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Ferguson, a project manager who lives just “a block away” from the aerospace manufacturing facility in west Garden Grove, evacuated her home over the Memorial Day Weekend when a tank containing methyl methacrylate at the facility overheated and threatened either a blast or toxic spillage onto local streets and prompted a maelstrom of local evacuations, a state of emergency and a federal probe.
It’s been five months since the incident but “we can’t get comfortable now,” Ferguson said. “We need to make sure that we’re safe.”
Days-long evacuation orders reached some 50,000 area residents spanning six cities — Anaheim, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Stanton and Westminster — and in early June, three weeks after the chemical scare, a GKN Aerospace executive publicly promised to hold a meeting to hear community concerns. More than 600 community members attended the long-awaited Oct. 27 meeting at the Delta Hotels in Garden Grove.
GKN Aerospace, which employs more than 550 people at its Garden Grove site, has apologized several times for the incident, including again at Tuesday night’s meeting, where GKN Aerospace Senior Vice President Steve Carlin began his remarks by saying the company was “committed to making things right.”
Several company executives and legal personnel delivered a slideshow presentation on company operations and details on the claims program before fielding public comment and questions from the audience.
When it was her turn to speak, Ferguson, a project manager who’s lived in Stanton for more than 12 years, raised questions about GKN Aerospace’s recently approved safety plan and potential health issues stemming from the chemical incident.
“I’m really concerned about that MMA evaluation that they did, the testing,” she later said. “It was unbelievable; there was such great saturation, that smell walking into the home, it was horrific.”
Ferguson recalled her neighborhood smelling like “acetone” or “nail polish.”
After emergency crews quelled the threat, Orange County Health Care Agency, working with the South Coast Air Quality Management District to remove thousands of gallons of methyl methacrylate from the failed storage tank, warned residents they may notice a “distinctive fruity or plastic-like odor” during the removal process.
Air monitoring at the time did not detect toxic contamination, and authorities said odors were well below health concern levels.
Chief among several concerns raised, Ferguson and community members questioned GKN Aerospace’s safety plan — recently approved by the Orange County Superior Court — which includes a commitment to annual audits by an independent, third party for a minimum of seven years.
“I’m very concerned about the auditing because it is upsetting,” she said. “I want to make sure that they’re auditing properly and on a routine cadence, not just letting it go after seven years.”
Several attendees pointed out that before the Memorial Day weekend incident, the company already had a history of spills, leakages and violations that prompted smaller-scale evacuations for employees and city officials’ 2023 order that the firm improve its “general housekeeping.”
Community members also raised questions about why the community meeting took months to organize, what precautions would be taken if GKN Aerospace pursues an expansion and logistics related to the claims program.
Just hours before the community meeting, GKN Aerospace launched its up-to-$100 million claims program. Among the compensation amounts being offered, qualified claimants may receive up to $300 per night per household to cover hotel stays, various sums for meals and transportation, a $500 payment per household for loss of use of their residence and up to $500 per day in documented lost wages for hourly employees who missed work due to the evacuation.
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An additional $8.47 million went toward reimbursing emergency agencies who handled the hazmat response and $15 million in civil penalties for GKN.
Ferguson left the meeting saying she’d “definitely” submit a claim.
Xiem Tools owner Kevin Nguyen launched his ceramics and pottery tools company in 2009, one of several manufacturers sharing Garden Grove’s industrial hub with GKN Aerospace.
Nguyen, who lives just east of the evacuation zone in Garden Grove, was spared evacuation orders but mentioned his parents and several employees were told to leave their homes.
His company was closed for four days, and Nguyen said he paid his eight employees for their time they were unable to work.
Nguyen said he felt safe returning to work. “We took the information they’ve given us and we feel we are safe to get back to work,” he said of GKN and its facility.
Nguyen said he was at the meeting to evaluate whether to recoup his costs through litigation or the claims program and left the meeting saying he was unsure of next steps because of questions over employee reimbursement.
Assemblymember Tri Ta, who represents Westminster, earlier in the year introduced AB 760, which would have let residents and businesses exempt legal settlement payments from their income taxes.
The bill would have applied to legal payments or payouts related to the May chemical incident, but Gov. Gavin Newsom ultimately vetoed the bill last month, saying he supported the bill’s intent but argued that tax exclusions should be handled through the annual state budget process.
“I am deeply disappointed that after declaring a disaster, Governor Newsom vetoed AB 760. These families did nothing to cause the disaster and they should not face uncertainty over whether the state will tax the compensation they receive because of it,” Ta said in a statement following Newsom’s decision.
Sofia Awaida, a Garden Grove resident who evacuated with her family, is part of the “GKN Out of Garden Grove Coalition” that’s attended nearly every Garden Grove City Council meeting since the chemical scare to press local elected officials to impose a “buffer zone” between the GKN facility in west Garden Grove and residential areas and a moratorium, or pause, on military manufacturing operations in the city.
“Financial compensation is needed, and it’s the bare minimum,” Awaida said of the claims program.
“But based on the questions that people were asking, it’s not accommodating to a lot of individuals who were facing different circumstances,” she added, mentioning the program does not compensate emotional distress or physical injuries.
“I think it was good that a lot of the community was able to show up and speak to GKN directly to tell them that this is what we experienced,” she said, “and it’s much more than just paying for a hotel for a night.
“I don’t think that their responses were sufficient enough to accommodate what they put our community through.”
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