Panic and confusion described by some forced to evacuate due to Garden Grove chemical scare

The mass evacuation in Garden Grove and nearby cities Friday left some residents panicked and confused.

Officials warned that a possible explosion could produce a toxic cloud because of a malfunction in a tank containing a flammable, volatile chemical used at an aerospace plant in Garden Grove.

As they scrambled to evacuate about 40,000 people, the chaotic scenario raised more questions than anyone was able to immediately answer.

Britney Pham, a 26-year-old Westminster resident, was disappointed with what she described as a lack of communication from officials.

“Should we be getting everything that we think is important, or do we just grab what’s basically essential to live for the next couple of days?” Pham asked.

She wasn’t sure whether she should bring an urn containing her older sister’s ashes or leave it behind.

Other residents had their own concerns.

At the Garden Grove Community Center, roughly 150 people from nearby evacuation zones waited, many of them joined by their dogs. Several senior residents of Magic Lamp Mobile Home Park in Westminster said they were initially evacuated Thursday, adding that U.S. marshals had gone door to door earlier Friday telling people to leave.

“We didn’t realize, but it’s only like three blocks away from where we lived,” said Brenda Cordaro, a 72-year-old resident of the senior mobile home park.

She said she got a call from a doggie daycare Friday and was told she had to pick up Finn, her dog, because the facility also had received evacuation orders. Cordaro, who had stayed overnight at a Motel 6, said she had to go to CVS on Friday morning to buy a toothbrush and other essentials.

“Who knows how long this is going to be?” Cordaro said. “We called the police department, we called different agencie, and they weren’t answering, or they just had us on hold.”

At an afternoon news conference, officials said they didn’t know how long it would be, either. The scenario simply is unprecedented.

Cordaro said a Garden Grove city employee had told her and her neighbors Thursday to go to Rancho Alamitos High School.

“They told us the school was going to be open last night as an evacuation center and it was not,” she said, adding that it was closed when they got there about 8 p.m. “We went there and it was dark. Nobody was there.”

“We didn’t have any kind of a plan. No one knew what was going on,” said Richard Hernandez, a 70-year-old Westminster resident and Cordaro’s neighbor.

See also: OC buses help evacuate residents of Stanton assisted living facility due to Garden Grove Hazmat emergency

Hernandez said he initially packed enough for one day but packed for three days after the second evacuation order came  Friday. He said many residents in the senior mobile home park are disabled and had not left, either because they were immobile or could not hear what was going on.

“That’s not good at all. Especially when you have something as potential as that,” Hernandez said. “There’s going to be hell to pay, I think, when this is over.”

Isaac Magnus of Westminster said he believed he was near the edge of the evacuation area and initially decided to stay put.

“I was reading the parameters and I was like, we’re right here at the edge, so I’m gonna hold off for a little bit,” he said.

“It didn’t seem like a huge emergency,” said Magnus, 33, adding that he had not seen much visible emergency response activity in his immediate area. “I was kind of waiting to see if any cops would roll through.”

Roughly 20 minutes later, a Westminster patrol car drove through the neighborhood, down the street from Westminster High School.

An officer alerted residents that they were in a mandatory evacuation zone and urged them to leave.

See also: Map shows Garden Grove hazmat incident and evacuation around aerospace plant

Small children, the elderly and everyone in between gathered inside and outside  the Cypress Recreation & Community Service Center. Meals — pizza, burgers, hot dogs and pasta — were distributed by volunteers about 6 p.m.

Several people brought pets with them — small and large dogs, a cat on a leash, a pair of birds in a travel cage.

Occasional barking broke through the hum of chatter as the hours slowly ticked away.

No cots or beds were being provided, though. So it was not clear what would happen as darkness fell.