LOS ANGELES, May 23 — Tens of thousands of people were ordered to leave their homes in California yesterday after a huge chemical tank began leaking, with warnings it might blow up, sending toxic fumes over a heavily populated area.

The tank contained 7,000 gallons (26,000 litres) of methyl methacrylate, a volatile and flammable liquid used to make plastics, with firefighters warning the situation was looking grim.

“There are literally two options left,” Incident Commander Craig Covey said.

“The tank fails and spills a total of about 6-7,000 gallons of very bad chemicals into the parking lot in that area or, two, the tank goes into a thermal runaway and blows up, affecting the tanks around them that have fuel or chemicals in them as well.

“We are setting up these evacuations in preparation for these two options: it fails, or it blows up.

“Please follow our requests and orders for evacuations,” he emphasized.

The incident was unfolding in the Garden Grove area of Orange County, southeast of Los Angeles.

Garden Grove Police Chief Amir El-Farra said about 40,000 people were affected by the evacuation order, with several thousand refusing to leave their homes.

Aerial footage filmed by local TV stations showed jets of water being sprayed at the tank, which has a capacity of 34,000 gallons.

‘Best-case scenario’ 

Orange County health officer Regina Chinsio Kwong said the large exclusion zone around the tank was a necessary precaution.

“If it does explode and there is a vapor, you are all safe as long as you are out of the zone that was determined to be an evacuation zone,” she said in a video update.

She appealled for anyone who might notice “a fruity and heavy smell” to alert authorities.

“Smelling it doesn’t mean you’ve reached a level that causes symptoms. But we don’t want you to smell that. So we need to know if you’re smelling it.”

No injuries had been reported by Friday afternoon, and there was no immediate indication as to what caused the leak, which was initially reported on Thursday.

Covey said crews were preparing for a chemical spill, which he described as a “best-case scenario” and far preferable to an explosion and toxic plume.

Responders were working to put containment barriers in place to prevent any spilled material from reaching storm drains or river channels that funnel into the ocean.

The US Environmental Protection Agency says methyl methacrylate is irritating to the skin, eyes, and mucous membranes in humans.

“Respiratory effects have been reported in humans following acute (short-term) and chronic (long-term) inhalation exposures,” a fact sheet on the agency’s website says.

“Neurological symptoms have also been reported in humans following acute exposure.” — AFP

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At the Valley Indoor Swap Meet, Panorama City, California

President says reality star a ‘big Maga person’ but backing may prove more hindrance than help in deep-blue bastion

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump’s endorsement is typically a boon for candidates seeking elected office – a show of support, or disapproval, from the president has proved significant in races across the US this year.

But Trump’s recent comments on the Los Angeles mayor’s race, just weeks before the primary, are sure to benefit Democrats. The president spoke favorably of Spencer Pratt, a former Republican and reality TV star who is polling second in the contest to lead America’s second-largest city.

CANNES, May 21 — Havana-born Hollywood star Andy Garcia told AFP that the overwhelming majority of Cubans would support an intervention to overthrow their government as he presented his latest film at the Cannes Film Festival.

The star of films The Godfather Part III and Ocean’s Eleven said he still woke up every morning dreaming of a Cuba “free from repression” after 67 years of communist rule on the island.

“Nobody wants war, but absolute repression and suffering of the people in that country is not the alternative, that’s not something to embrace,” he said during an interview on Tuesday to promote his detective movie Diamond which features an A-list cast.

“If you were to ask the Cuban people, not the Cuban government... would they want us (the United States), France, anybody, to intervene and save them? You would get a unanimous 90 percent people saying, ‘Please come and invade our country and get rid of these people’,” Garcia said.

US President Donald Trump has imposed an oil blockade on Cuba, aggravating the impoverished island’s worst economic and energy crisis in decades, while making repeated threats that the US might forcibly topple the government.

In Cuba, young people have told AFP privately they favour a US intervention, seeing it as the only chance to transform the island’s fortunes, despite fears it would lead to bloodshed.

But older Cubans tend to reject the threats, pointing to over six decades of tensions between Havana and Washington that never bubbled over into open conflict, despite coming perilously close to a nuclear confrontation in 1962.

LA love letter 

Garcia, 70, left Cuba as a child and his film Diamond serves as a sort of “love letter” to his adopted hometown Los Angeles where he has lived for most of his life.

His third turn behind the camera is a project 20 years in the making, based on an idea which started out as a homework project for his daughter.

It grew into a film about fedora-wearing and hard-drinking private detective Joe Diamond who is stuck in the past while trying to crack a case about a billionaire’s death in contemporary Los Angeles.

Garcia’s actor friends Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman agreed to play roles as a barman and coroner, while the rest of the cast includes The Whale star Brendan Fraser as a detective, with Rosemarie DeWitt and Vicky Krieps the female leads.

Garcia said he had learned from many industry legends over his career, including The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola who handed him his first major break in a once-stellar career that has stalled in recent decades.

“I always wanted to make movies, not just be in them,” Garcia told AFP.

Reviews were mostly positive about his first effort, with Deadline calling it a “wonderfully atmospheric, nostalgic and entertaining contemporary noir”.

The Wrap said “at times it betrays its amateur beginnings with clunky plotting.” — AFP 

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