The cities of Garden Grove, Stanton and Westminster all asked for state funding to help recoup costs accrued during the Garden Grove chemical incident, but the Governor’s Office of Emergency Assistance only approved Garden Grove’s request.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, an overheating 34,000-gallon tank of potentially toxic and volatile methyl methacrylate at GKN Aerospace in Garden Grove triggered evacuation orders for some 50,000 residents before emergency crews neutralized the threat. Evacuations spanned six cities, with Garden Grove, Stanton and Westminster taking the brunt of the orders.
The state could reimburse up to 75% of costs related to the chemical incident, including for overtime accrued by emergency response personnel, supplies, materials and equipment, according to the California Disaster Assistance Act.
“We’ve been approved to start putting all these costs together and sending them up. So that’s the work we started,” Garden Grove city spokesperson Johnathan Garcia said, adding the city received state approval on Aug. 12, but there’s no timeline on when the funding could be expected.
“We’re not gonna know what amount’s going to be reimbursed until we submit all of our costs, and then we’ll hear back through the CDAA process,” he said.
Westminster received a letter denying its reimbursement request “just over the weekend,” City Manager Christine Cordon said during a City Council meeting this week. “We were the third most impacted city of the six cities, and so, this came as a very disappointing piece of news for us.”
Westminster is looking for other avenues for reimbursement, Cordon said, and the city is “in contact with a representative that is working on behalf of GKN in terms of what GKN is doing.”
Last week, GKN Aerospace announced it is “currently assessing a potential claims program that would allow eligible people to resolve claims for losses incurred in connection with the May evacuation order,” but did not offer a timeline for the potential program.
“Unfortunately, at this time, we don’t know what that looks like, we don’t know all the details, we don’t know how much, et cetera. But that is still in the works,” Cordon said. “But that there is a recovery effort on GKN’s part, as far as other funding sources, we’re looking to see what we could do as well.”
Cordon said the state did not offer a reason for the denial, but “we are working with some of the other cities to kind of determine if we can find out why that was the case with the other cities that were also denied as well.”
County officials on Tuesday could not be immediately reached about whether the county’s requests for reimbursement have been answered by the state.
Stanton officials received a letter from the Office of Emergency Assistance on Aug. 12 denying the city’s request for funding.
“As a result of assessments conducted following the event, the determination was made the impacts from the 2026 Orange County Chemical Incident were not of such severity and magnitude to be beyond the capabilities of local government to respond to and recover from. Therefore, the city of Stanton’s request for CDAA funds to address the 2026 Orange County Chemical Incident is denied,” the letter said.
Most of Stanton, a compact city of 3.1 square miles and 40,000 residents, falls immediately north of the GKN Aerospace plant. The bulk of the city’s residents — some live just yards away from the facility — were evacuated.
“It would have been understandable if it was consistent across all cities that were impacted, but I think the concern is that it wasn’t consistent,” Stanton City Manager Hannah Shin-Heydorn said.
“Well, the next step is, the city is waiting to hear more about what GKN will be doing for the community. We’re still waiting on information regarding a town hall,” Shin-Heydorn said. “Of course, the city is concerned about our costs that we outlayed in support of this issue, but more importantly, we really want to understand what the avenues are for our community, our residents and businesses who are looking to be made whole.”