GKN Aerospace Slapped With $3.5M Demand Letter

A formal demand letter to GKN Aerospace Transparency Systems is seeking full restitution for the May 21 incident that resulted in the mandatory evacuation of some 50,000 residents across Garden Grove and surrounding Orange County communities.

Methyl methacrylate (MMA), a toxic chemical, was released from the GKN Aerospace facility on Western Avenue when one of its Garden Grove chemical storage tanks began overheating.

“While GKN has pledged generic community relief funds to local non-profit organizations, those corporate contributions do not absolve GKN of its strict financial liability to the taxpayers of Orange County,” Orange County Counsel Leon Page said in the July 17 demand letter. “The County demands immediate financial accountability to mitigate the impact caused to the County’s public emergency resources.”

GKN Aerospace created a $3 million community fund through the Orange County United Way’s OC Community Resilience Fund to provide emergency financial aid to lower income families, displaced residents, and small business owners.

Orange County’s First District also allocated $500,000 from its discretionary funds to the city of Garden Grove to help residents impacted by the incident.

However, the county can no longer wait for GKN to step up and do more to make the residents, businesses and the local government whole as soon as possible, according to Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen, who represents the First District.

“For us as a county, this is an emergency that we had to pay upfront for and so this would be helpful because we are balancing our budget,” Nguyen told OrangeCountyLawyers.com.

The First District includes the cities of Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, and Westminster as well as the unincorporated communities of Midway City and Rossmoor.

30+ Lawsuits Filed Against GKN Aerospace

More than 30 state and federal lawsuits have been filed against GKN Aerospace including by evacuated homeowners.

Affected residents are actively seeking compensation for property value losses, lost wages, and relocation costs incurred during the crisis.

Read more about pursuing litigation against GKN.

“We want to try to get some relief sooner than later because the United Way had their three million dollars that went out and within a week or so the funding was gone so, we know that lots of people were impacted,” Nguyen said in a phone interview.

The county’s demand letter set July 31 as the deadline for GKN to answer whether they will begin discussions to pay back a preliminary estimate of $3.5 million in costs.

Page also asked GKN to preserve evidence, including all internal communications and data feeds, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams messages, as far back as January 2024.

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Page’s data preservation order warns of severe court-imposed sanctions if evidence is destroyed.

“GKN has been working with the county and the different public agencies to make sure that the chemicals are safely removed and also disclosed,” Nguyen said. “In terms of funding, we’re still waiting. We haven’t heard of other efforts since the $3 million they donated to the United Way.”

GKN Aerospace Transparency Systems company leaders did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Orange County officials are also waiting on an incident report that the Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA) is expected to release.

“We all want to know what happened and how did it happen so we can put policy procedure in place to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Nguyen added. “I think also it would assist GKN to know, on their end, where to go from here.”

OCFA did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.