Empty streets and packed shelters across Orange County as thousands wait for toxic leak to end
With suitcases in hand and pets in tow, thousands of residents fled northern Orange County as a massive evacuation zone swallowed entire neighborhoods surrounding a contaminated industrial site in Garden Grove.Gov.Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency after the danger zone ballooned into a nearly 10-square-mile exclusion area stretching across Garden Grove, Anaheim, Stanton, Cypress, Buena Park and Westminster — uprooting as many as 79,000 people.Inside the sprawling perimeter, the normally packed suburban streets looked more like a ghost town.Rows of homes sat dark and silent behind police tape, cars abandoned in driveways as residents scrambled to get out.
Businesses shut their doors, while officers blocked off intersections near the heart of the emergency with patrol cruisers and barricades.“I live right behind the factory.For years, we complained to the city regarding the fumes and the smell at night.
They never did anything to it,” Alberto Chavez, 51, told The California Post.“Look what happened now … and who is paying the consequences? The people who live there.”Some residents have been allowed brief returns to retrieve medication or rescue pets, but most are now scattered across shelters, hotels, and the homes of friends or relatives, waiting for answers about when, or if, they can go back.California Post News: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedInCalifornia Post Sports Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, XCalifornia Post Opinion California Post Newsletters: Sign up here!California Post App: Download here!Home delivery: Sign up here!Page Six Hollywood: Sign up here!The Cypress Community Center has become a gathering point for evacuees, 79-year-old Yoshi Nakashini sat outside with his girlfriend and her son, alongside two cats resting in carriers at their feet.
The family had spent the previous night in a hotel near Disneyland after struggling to find pet-friendly accommodations, paying roughly $350 for two rooms an...