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Hi, folks.
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This is your host, Matt Silver.
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Today we have a special episode.
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We want to talk about the Garden Grove chemical plant near disaster that almost occurred, but nonetheless impacted some 50,000 people.
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You know, we were recording an episode with our guest Adam Atamian on zoning and where it came from and how it came about and why we should care.
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And then this disaster hits.
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And it doesn't just hit, it hits down the road from where we are right now talking to you.
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Sivica is only located a couple miles up the road from where that occurred.
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So while we had Adam here, we thought we'd talk about that incident and how zoning plays a role in either making a potential disaster smaller and better, or potentially playing into its impact in a bad way.
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So stay tuned for this special episode of the True Code Podcast.
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From Civic Allah, this is TrueCode, a podcast explaining what code enforcement is, why our communities need it, and why you should care.
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From firsthand experiences, we discuss quality of life issues to reveal the truth about code enforcement.
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So here's my guest.
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I have Adam Atamian, who's a longtime planner, community development director, oversees code enforcement, a variety of other departments in his city.
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Adam, while I've got you here, uh what about this Garden Grove near chemical explosion?
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It's still a disaster, but like thankfully the tanks didn't explode.
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What do you know about this?
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What's your feeling on how, you know, the zoning impacts this and how the disaster was created?
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Terrible, unfortunate situation for those residents to be in.
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You know, looking at this from a city planning perspective, seems only reasonable that this type of facility would have potential issue at some point in its lifespan.
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It was like a chemical manufacturing and storage facility, right?
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Like literally giant, yeah, huge drums that hold thousands.
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I believe it was 92,000 gallons of this particular flammable material.
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And it was a a safety valve, it failed.
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Uh it wasn't necessarily a problem with the tank, I don't believe, but it did start to release vapor and started heating up, which caused a potential blast zone.
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There were 50,000 people in an area that that surprised me.
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Meaning it was like a small, dense area next to this chemical plant.
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Very small, very compact, and very tightly knit into a labyrinth of industrial uses.
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But also not that far away from the Seal Beach Armory.
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You know, these residents are kind of pigeonholed around some potentially impactful uses that in today's world we would not zone in the same way.
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Meaning we've got like dense apartment complexes.
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Are they set up and zoned to a butt, like literally adjacent to that chemical plant, or is there some kind of barrier between them?
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I don't know the specific land uses around the chemical plant, but I know it's an entirely urbanized area.
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So there's either a buffer of other residential properties or other industrial properties, or the residential goes right up to the chemical plant.
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So you've got industrial and then it may be different kinds of industrial, just the chemical plant, but then you've got residential abutting it.
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And this is kind of one of the reasons that zoning laws exist is to generally try to separate residential and industrial because you want to be able to drive to your job at the industrial plant, but you don't necessarily want to be living next to it because of, well, potential explosions, noxious odors, fires.
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Absolutely.
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And this isn't a discussion of what's next door to the plant.
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The blast zone that was established on these evacuation maps extended like a mile away.
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So we're not talking about, you know, people who live next door.
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And this wasn't entirely an evacuation due to the exposure to airborne chemicals.
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This was an evacuation that was largely driven by the blast itself.
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The explode, we're talking about like an explosion zone.
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Absolutely.
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Wow.
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You know, looking at the blast zone, I think that this had the potential to probably knock out windows as far as two miles away, that kind of explosion.
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And within that blast zone, which here is about a mile, there were 50,000 people living.
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50,000 people, absolutely.
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And so you look at this as a planning issue and you go, well, oh, in today's world, we would not zone residential near this plan.
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And I don't know which came first.
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Right.
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Were they there already and the city is zoning later on, or was that zoned
Load full transcript
intentionally the way it was?
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Exactly.
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Very easy to Monday morning quarterback, of course.
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You know, this obviously was not the intention of that city.
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And things have a tendency to change over time.
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So this is an aerospace business that may have started off a little bit differently, and over time it was just like, oh, yeah, we need this type of storage and that type of storage, and it morphs over time.
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But in looking at this incident, there's other aspects of planning that come into play here.
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So in reviewing the early reporting on this, you know, watching the city council meeting, comments that were given shortly after the incident, which itself was an explosive meeting, so to speak.
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Absolutely.
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Very it was clear that there's always going to be a need for other types of facilities that can support emergency response.
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It was lucky that, you know, in this area, you've got a number of community colleges that have large auditoriums.
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Golden West, you know, was able to open their doors to allow evacuees to spend some time there.
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50,000 people on the drop of a hat had to go somewhere.
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Were there enough emergency shelters for people to go?
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Yeah, that's something that is definitely going to be investigated in the after action reports.
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You know, I can tell you this was a very quick incident going from its initial indications of danger to when evacuation orders were given.
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50,000 people, that is a lot of people to move in a very short amount of time.
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So, you know, I don't know what the specific steps were taken as far as acquiring and setting up shelters, but that can take some time.
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But they move quick.
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They seem like they move quick.
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I mean, I don't do have anything to do with the city of Garden Grove, neither do you, but just from a third person perspective, things moved about as quick as they could in that scenario.
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But perhaps the zoning in that circumstance, where we are now, is not where they would have wanted it to be when they originally zoned it.
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And you raise a great point, by the way, about it may have started out as a different kind of use, become more volatile over time.
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My mind immediately goes to Hindu Beach, Coronado Islands.
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Some of these other places have nuclear weapon facilities.
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They store nuclear weapons in these places.
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And as my dad would say, it's a positive to live nearby because you're vaporized, you don't even know what happened.
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It's also uh a negative because you're vaporized and you don't even know what happened.
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And so interesting little yeah, side bit there.
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Thank you for your uh your thoughts and your expertise on that, Adam.
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Thank you everybody for joining us.
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Stay tuned for our next episode.
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Catch us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and of course our website, civicalaw.com.
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Thank you for joining us today.
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