71–80 of 177 posts
They explore the root causes of historical accidents. Importantly, they do it from a broad perspective: not just the chemistry, but the human factors, the decision making, and the process failures that led to the accident and how to prevent such things in the future.
Where are all of the humanoid robots? Get them in there with whatever the oil and gas industry uses for tapping pipes/containers under pressure. I'm only half kidding.
Why can’t they drill it and pipe it off into some drainage pipe for cooling or collecting in trucks? Divide and conquer
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The actual site of the tank is 33.78356416377991, -117.99993897629278 [1] - its in an industrial park, and its not a large scale chemical manufacturing facility. Its 'light manufacturing' for a company that makes custom formed acrylics for aerospace. https://www.google.com/maps/place/33°47'00.8%22N+117°59'59.8...
I get that, but the reality is that 40k people were evacuated. Shouldn't zoning be set up so as to prevent that? Light manufacturing in general is fine but it seems like these particular storage tanks might have been a bit too large for that location.
Also notable that the people who live across the street from the tanks don't live in Garden Grove. By a miracle of local agency boundaries, the factory is in Garden Grove but the houses are in Stanton. Welcome to California.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since the plant was around long before the homes, the homes were built around it. Zoning laws, if they existed then, should have prevented the homes from building, not the plant.
I have seen this claim (the plant was there first), but I can’t find a source. The nearest houses were built in 1958 according to Zillow.
Where are all of the humanoid robots? Get them in there with whatever the oil and gas industry uses for tapping pipes/containers under pressure. I'm only half kidding.
Flash forward to today, we are still in quite the same position where robots can do fancy, flashy tech demos, but when it comes to doing something useful that is also unpredictable, the know-now is still not there. Even teleoperation is not a robust answer to this yet, it still has some maturing to do.
They say it will fail for sure, either leak or explode. I wonder why they can't drain the tank into another facility. Maybe they just lack an appropriate container.
But also, the chemical is actively undergoing an exothermic reaction (which is why the tank is at risk for failure). How do you transport such a toxic fluid without putting much more of the public at risk?
Worth mentioning that in February the EPA proposed to severely deregulate chemical facilities like the one in Garden Grove, gutting third-party audits, hazard reporting, and public transparency requirements. They titled it the ‘Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention.’ The public comment window closed just eleven days before this disaster… https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-24/pdf/2026-0...
I love how the current title of this post just assumes that everyone lives in California. There are other "Orange County"s in the U.S.
Do you get angry when someone mentions London that they didn't specify that it is London, England? Because there are other Londons.
In terms of population, the biggest London is 9.1 million people and the 2nd-biggest is under 500,000. Quite a big difference! I think that's why when someone says "London" one can usually reasonably assume they're talking about the one in England, unless otherwise specified (or unless they live near a different one).
The biggest Orange County is 3.1 million and the 2nd-biggest Orange County is 1.4 million, so the difference is not nearly as great. I'd even suggest they're in the same general category of size. In the context of a national/international website, it's far less clear that one of the "Orange County"s is so overwhelmingly what people refer to that its state need not be specified.
Worth mentioning that in February the EPA proposed to severely deregulate chemical facilities like the one in Garden Grove, gutting third-party audits, hazard reporting, and public transparency requirements. They titled it the ‘Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention.’ The public comment window closed just eleven days before this disaster… https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-24/pdf/2026-0...
It's not like chemical spills didn't happen before these changes though. Let's not sensationalize. Can you directly link the change in policy t this leak?