by Mark McDermott
Shockwaves reverberated across Manhattan Beach on the night of October 2 as explosions and huge leaping flames emanated from the Chevron Refinery, puncturing the cozy sense of sleepy safety the community has long prided itself on.
But as Councilmember Nina Tarnay remarked on Tuesday night, when the City Council received a new report on the fire’s causes from Chevron Refinery Director Bryon Stock and an update on resultant changes to the city’s emergency communication system, what occurred on that fiery night may have been a “best of worst case” scenario. It woke the city up, literally and figuratively, while stopping short of fatal disaster.
Tarnay, who lives above Sand Dune Park and saw the sky change seconds after the initial explosion, said the incident was “terrifying” for herself and her neighbors. But she framed what followed — the months of work by city staff, regional emergency managers, and Chevron to overhaul how the South Bay communicates in a crisis — as exactly the kind of reckoning a community needs.
“It was the best case of a worst case,” she said. “We have an opportunity now to go over everything that we didn’t do properly and to improve on it.”
That opportunity, and what the city has done with it, was at the heart of Tuesday night’s presentation.
Stock, making his second appearance before the council to address the incident, came this time with answers. Chevron’s internal investigation, he said, is now complete: a localized section of piping at the top of one of the ISOMAX furnaces had become dangerously thin due to a specific and unusual form of corrosion called hydrogen-free, low-sulfur sulfidation corrosion. The failure was compounded by the geometry of the piping itself, which created increased velocity and turbulence at the exact location where the pipe gave way — just three feet from where routine inspections had found the piping to be intact.
“We now know the cause of the failure and we know how to prevent it from happening again,” Stock said. “The learnings from this incident are already being shared and applied across our refinery and throughout Chevron’s global operations, and this will become an industry learning as well.”
Stock said Chevron had assessed all other furnaces at the refinery operating under similar conditions and found no concerns. The failed piping has been replaced with alloy material more resistant to that form of corrosion, and additional inspection points have been added to the monitoring program.
“I want to assure you that had an evacuation order been necessary, our police department officers would have gone door to door to ensure every household was notified,” Stock said, echoing assurances he had made to the council in October. “I hope that by coming before you tonight I have provided some transparency and some answers to the questions and concerns you may have. I look forward to the opportunity to restore Chevron’s good neighbor status.”
CalOSHA has endorsed the company’s pre-startup safety review, and a cautious restart of the ISOMAX unit is now underway.
Stock also reported significant improvements to community alerting, noting that Chevron has committed to fully fund the personnel, equipment, and services required to support an upgraded regional notification infrastructure — including Starlink-equipped communications chiefs on call around the clock.
The ISOMAX process unit sits at the southeast corner of the refinery, bordering Manhattan Beach. It is an essential component of Southern California’s fuel supply — the El Segundo refinery produces approximately 40 percent of the region’s jet fuel and 20 percent of its motor vehicle fuel. When it exploded at 9:31 p.m. on October 2, flames were visible across the entire South Bay basin. Manhattan Beach and El Segundo firefighters worked through the night alongside Chevron’s on-site fire department, and the blaze was fully extinguished by 7:30 the following morning.
What wasn’t extinguished nearly as quickly was the anxiety of thousands of residents who had no idea what was burning, how serious it was, or what they should do. Civic Engagement Manager Alexandria Latragna acknowledged Tuesday that the fire had exposed real gaps — and that the city’s proximity to the refinery made closing them essential.
“Manhattan Beach is vulnerable to a range of natural and human-caused emergencies,” Latragna said. “Our proximity to the Chevron refinery makes robust emergency communications very critical for our city.”
The critical problem: under California law and Assembly Bill 1646, it is El Segundo — not Manhattan Beach — that serves as the Local Implementing Agency responsible for pushing out notifications when an incident occurs at the Chevron facility. Manhattan Beach firefighters who responded that night were incorporated into operational roles at the scene, not into the unified command’s communications chain. The result was that a neighboring city full of frightened residents had no formal mechanism to quickly receive verified information from the incident command.
That night, no holding statement — the kind of simple, immediate message that tells residents only that an incident is occurring and instructs them to go inside and await further information — was ever sent. That has now changed. El Segundo has pre-approved a holding statement template specifically for Chevron incidents, and off-duty division chiefs with direct access to AlertSouthBay are on call around the clock to push it out the moment an incident is detected.
“That is a major enhancement,” said El Segundo Fire Division Chief Evan Siefke. “Something is going on, we’re aware of it — it gives you an initial action: go indoors and await further instructions. That way it gives us time, as incident commanders, to get the information exactly — the size, complexity, the scope — and is it leaving the property of the Chevron refinery.”
Since October, Manhattan Beach, El Segundo, Chevron, and the regional AlertSouthBay network have undertaken a systematic overhaul of how emergency information moves in the South Bay.
MBFD Fire Chief Jesse Alexander walked the council through the mechanics of unified command — the multi-agency incident management structure that governs response to complex emergencies — and explained why getting the right notification to the right people is not as simple as it might appear. The difference between a shelter-in-place order and an evacuation order, he noted, is not a matter of preference. Issue the wrong one, and people who should stay indoors walk into a hydrogen sulfide release. Issue the other, and people who should evacuate stay put beside an explosion.
“Once you send that information out,” Alexander said, “it’s very, very, very challenging to withdraw it, because it creates more confusion.”
Among the specific improvements now in place:
Holding statements: El Segundo has pre-approved templated holding statements specifically for Chevron incidents that can be pushed through AlertSouthBay immediately, giving residents something to act on while incident command assesses the scope of the emergency.
24/7 communications chiefs: Two off-duty El Segundo division chiefs are now on call around the clock, equipped with Starlink internet, battery backups, and laptop computers with direct access to AlertSouthBay. Chevron funds both the personnel and the equipment.
Genasys zone mapping: Manhattan Beach has been divided into 18 emergency zones — each containing no more than 3,000 people, each aligned with a single school — enabling surgical, targeted alerts rather than city-wide notifications that overwhelm traffic and create unnecessary panic. Residents can find their zone at manhattanbeach.gov/genasys. “Know Your Zone” is now the city’s public preparedness campaign.
Updated standard operating procedures: The AlertSouthBay Task Force revised its protocols for industrial incidents. The updated SOP was submitted to FEMA and the state and received notable recognition. “We got word back from FEMA and the state that it’s one of the most comprehensive plans they’ve seen,” said AlertSouthBay Regional Administrator Soraya Sutherlin. “They asked if they could share it as a best practice.”
A first responder playbook: Staff developed a comprehensive evacuation guidebook for Manhattan Beach police and fire — a working document unified command can use at the command post to ensure no steps are missed in the fog of a two-in-the-morning emergency.
Chevron Corporate Affairs Manager Jeff Wilson, who addressed the council after the full presentation, said the collaborative work on display Tuesday was unlike anything he had seen in his years working with South Bay cities.
“There has never been any more holistic group of emergency response professionals that are now really leaning in, learning and looking forward to what true comprehensive emergency communications needs to be,” Wilson said. “We have a firm commitment to provide the resources, the personnel and the funding to the benefit of both surrounding cities.”
One of the more revealing exchanges of the evening came when Tarnay asked what happens if a cyberattack takes down all digital communications systems. Sutherlin’s answer — that this had actually happened with another software provider in 2025 — was delivered without alarm.
The system, she explained, has redundancies backed by the State of California Alert Warning Center, which can access and replicate the region’s notification capabilities. But beyond the digital architecture, the answer ultimately circles back to something older and more reliable.
AM/FM radio.
“AM/FM radio still holds true today,” Sutherlin said, “and that is absolutely going to be a resource that we tap into.”
Council member Joe Franklin asked the obvious follow-up: shouldn’t residents have battery-operated radios for exactly this kind of scenario? Yes, Sutherlin confirmed — and the county is giving them away for free.
Alexander went further, advising residents to stock a full emergency kit: three days of water, batteries, a battery-operated radio. And when all else fails — when cell towers are down, when power is out, when the internet is gone — police and fire will go door to door.
“Face-to-face communication,” Sutherlin said simply, “will always be the best way we communicate.”
Council member Amy Howorth noted that amid all the impressive new systems and protocols on display Tuesday night, the council chamber itself was only sparsely attended by the public. That, she suggested, is the next frontier.
“People only pay attention when something happens like this,” Howorth said. “So I hope we keep amplifying the message.”
During the presentation, Howorth signed up for Genasys and discovered she’s in Zone 6. She also announced she was ordering a battery-operated radio.
Mayor David Lesser called the October fire “a learning experience” and praised the collaborative effort of the city, Chevron, and El Segundo in responding to it.
“We need to do better at getting a public outreach campaign that includes some of the basics we’ve touched on during this conversation tonight,” Lesser said. “This is an opportunity — the community is watching.” ER
