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” at the aerospace facility in the city of Garden Grove, just 5 miles from Disneyland, 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.