Many Orange County evacuees return home, while thousands closest to the chemical crisis still ordered to stay away

While the majority of evacuated Orange County residents were allowed to return home last night as officials said conditions of a compromised chemical tank improved, thousands remain under evacuation orders on Tuesday.

At a Fountain Valley Red Cross evacuation shelter, Ace Kelley is trying to keep his spirits up as he prepares for another long night sleeping in his truck with his cats. He is frustrated that he still can't go home.

"I think it's screwed up these people get to go home. I don't think it's fair," Kelley said. "I'm glad people got to go home, but I've been out here since Thursday."

Since the onset of the Garden Grove crisis last week, 50,000 people in several cities within a certain radius of a GKN Aerospace chemical tank were evacuated. Officials were uncertain if the failing tank would explode or leak, potentially exposing communities to toxic chemicals. By Monday evening, Orange County Fire Authority officials said the "worst-case scenario was mitigated and resolved."

This led to a reduction in the evacuation footprint, leaving 16,000 residents to remain under evacuation orders.

Luis Castro and his family remain evacuated, and on Tuesday morning, he returned to the Fountain Valley shelter from his graveyard shift as a truck driver.  

"At night, my wife and daughter sleep.  I leave for work around 10 p.m., and I come back at 6 a.m., and repeat. It's hard to sleep (but) making it work," Castro said, noting that they sleep in cots, in close quarters.

 Others, like Jazmine Ramiro, were leaving the shelter on Tuesday, after arriving last week.

"I have not been resting. I've been waking up at five in the morning. I'm not used to that and there is a lot of activities, and dogs and animals, barking noise," she said, relieved to go home.

Officials said on Monday that the remaining evacuees will be allowed to return home when it is determined to be safe, when the damaged tank is stabilized enough.

"We're going to make the decision, are those readings stabilized, is the community safe to come back? If that's the answer and all the unified incident commanders support it, then we're going to have that discussion to then go ahead and consider reducing the evacuation zones," OCFA Chief TJ McGovern said.

 The Garden Grove City Council is hosting a community forum on Tuesday evening regarding the chemical tank incident.