Vampire Planet: So Cal’s Chemical Disaster, a Gift from the War Machine |
CounterPunch Exclusives
CounterPunch Exclusives
Vampire Planet: So Cal’s Chemical Disaster, a Gift from the War Machine
Firefighters attempt to cool down GKN Aerospace’s leaking tank. YouTube screenshot.
This week in the Anthropocene
The news alerts were ominous. A chemical tank at an industrial site in Garden Grove, fifteen miles south of where I live, could blow at any moment. A nervous Orange County Fire Captain warned of two possible outcomes. Either 7,000 gallons of a highly toxic chemical soup would spill from the damaged tank, or, worse, a massive blast could poison a large swath of Southern California.
Over the next few days, the worry escalated from trepidation to panic. 50,000 residents around the facility were evacuated to temporary shelters as water was continuously hosed into the scalding-hot tank to cool it. Gov. Newsom declared a state of emergency, and experts were flown in to develop creative solutions to the impending catastrophe.
The tank, cracked and rapidly overheating, was full of methyl methacrylate, a pungent, highly volatile, flammable liquid used to make resins and heat-resistant coatings for airplane parts. Experts have long known that a chemical “runaway” was possible in old tanks like these, where very rapid polymerization can overheat and cause an explosion.
Fortunately, this worst-case scenario was later averted, and by Wednesday, officials said the tank had been stabilized. Yet no one can say for sure whether the risks won’t return one day.
The company that manages the plant, GKN Aerospace, manufactures components for planes such as the Airbus, as well as parts for a range of military applications. GKN boasts that it provides “cutting-edge solutions” to its customers, with a large Pentagon portfolio that includes supplying parts for the F-35 Lightning II and the Saab Gripen, the country’s most advanced and lethal fighter jets, and for C-130 military transport aircraft. GKN’s business is just one link in the state’s highly profitable and complex military supply chain.
A single F-35 Lightning II costs more than $109 million. The Saab Gripen and the C-130 run about $85 million each. The F-35 alone is projected to cost taxpayers more than $2 trillion (that’s not a typo) over the next several decades. War is very big business, and California’s aerospace and defense sector is booming.........