Garden Grove is the fifth-largest city in Orange County, but is something of a mystery to those who haven’t ventured into one of Southern California’s most diverse, culturally vibrant communities except when en route to a nearby destination such as Disneyland.
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But the city of more than 170,000 in northwest Orange County was thrust into the spotlight this week with the growing threat of a chemical explosion or leak at GKN Aerospace.
The industrial location is a little more than 6 miles west of Christ Cathedral and the Disney resort area, around the same distance east of Leisure World in Seal Beach and about 4 miles south of Knott’s Berry Farm. Going on this Memorial Day weekend near the city’s historic Main Street is the annual Garden Grove Strawberry Festival, now in its 66th year — though the Saturday morning parade and 5K were canceled.
Garden Grove is known to many as one of the Orange County cities, along with Westminster, Fountain Valley and Santa Ana, that include Little Saigon, home to thousands of Vietnamese Americans and a thriving business community.
But it also includes a lot of industry. GKN Aerospace is in the heart of the industrial center, Garden Grove City Councilmember George Brietigam said of the hub that includes the Garden Grove Army Base and companies such as Air Industries, Southland Industries and Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics.
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“It’s mostly industrial properties along Western (Avenue),” he said. “But you just go three blocks west, and then that’s where the West Garden Grove starts. And the housing goes from Springdale all the way down to the Seal Beach border.”
Evacuations for the area touch 40,000 residents, and “it’s a predominantly older community,” Brietigam said.
The specific demographics of the evacuation zone aren’t clear, but the U.S. Census Bureau released a look at the city in 2025 that showed:
• 43.1% of residents are Asian, 37.1% are Hispanic or Latino and 15.9% White (but not Hispanic or Latino);
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• The median household income is $92,174;
• 20.9% of the population is younger than 18, and 15.6% is 65 or older.