A hazardous materials response was launched in Huntington Beach on Wednesday after a chemical incident prompted emergency crews to secure the area.
Authorities said the problem began when one chemical was unintentionally combined with another inside a 55-gallon drum, triggering an “exothermic reaction” that caused the container to heat up, NBC LA reported.
The accidental chemical mixture occurred at a business in the 15200 block of News Boy Circle, leading officials to close a nearby street while crews worked at the scene.
“Firefighters and hazardous materials specialists are actively assessing the situation, identifying the hazard, and developing a mitigation plan to safely resolve the incident,” the Huntington Beach Fire Department said.
No injuries were reported in connection with the Huntington Beach hazmat incident.
By about 12:45 p.m., the chemical situation had been “successfully mitigated,” according to the Huntington Beach Fire Department.
“The Huntington Beach Fire Department Hazardous Materials Team, with assistance from the Anaheim Fire & Rescue Hazardous Materials Team, worked together to safely identify, contain, and mitigate the hazard,” the department wrote in a Facebook post.
“We appreciate the coordinated efforts of all responding personnel whose teamwork ensured a safe and efficient resolution to the incident,” they added.
The hazardous chemical mix comes weeks after an Orange County chemical leak in May elicited panic among residents and forced evacuations. A failed cooling system may have triggered the dangerous chemical leak at the Garden Grove aerospace facility that led officials to evacuate roughly 50,000 residents over an explosion threat, officials said.
Orange County Fire Authority Chief TJ McGovern said that a pressurized storage tank holding 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate, a highly flammable liquid used in plastic manufacturing, began heating up after the cooling mechanism stopped working for reasons that have yet to be determined.
