Early History / Biography / Why I'm Running

Hi ! I am Dr. Genghmun Eng.  I was born and raised in New York City, and I am a 1½ generation American.  My mother's mother escaped the Bolshevik Revolution, coming to America as a young girl.  Both my grandfathers ran Chinese Laundries.  My father worked at the Wilmington Delaware shipyards during WWII, while the war claimed his mother and younger brother in China.  My mother joined as a trainee for the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), as part of Jacqueline Cochran's 318th Army Airforce Flying Training Detachment (318th AAFTD) at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, TX.  Both my parents returned to New York after the war, met up again, got married, and worked various jobs before opening their own Chinese Laundry, where I worked from age 11 until completing college.

As a somewhat poor boy from New York, I first got hooked on Science back in 2nd grade, when someone brought in a Science Encyclopedia for “show and tell”.  I had never seen a book that big!  It was the year after Sputnik.  After that, I read all of my mother's airplane books, drew cross-sections of jet engines instead of hopscotch grids on NYC streets, and then discovered Rockets and Outer Space.  I was a Chemistry buff from 4th grade through High School, but switched to Physics in college, earning a B.S. in Physics in 1972 from Cooper Union (the only free private engineering college) and a PhD in Physics in 1978 from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. 

I met my wife-to-be, Sophie, at Illinois in 1974, where she earned a MS degree in Geology in 1977, then worked for Texaco in New Orleans, and later became a California Certified Engineering Geologist (CEG).  After my PhD, I landed a job as a Rocket Scientist at the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, CA, where I have now worked for 35+ years, helping to qualify materials for spacecrafts, and helping Space Industry Contractor personnel from technicians to Vice Presidents solve difficult problems involving Space Systems.  My wife, Sophie, and I have been Torrance Homeowners for 35+ years, and raised two children through the Torrance Public Schools.

I was also one of the earliest Citizen volunteers with the South Bay CERT, when it first started in 1996-1998; as well as a 14-year member of Youth Motivation Task Force (YMTF), giving talks to encourage minority students in the Los Angeles area to stay in school and stay off drugs; and a 10 year MathCounts coach of Middle School Students (“Mathletes”), preparing them for the annual National MathCounts Competition, which is sponsored by the Society of Professional Engineers.

Why I am Running for the Torrance City Council

Torrance has always been a wonderful place to live.  What attracted us to Torrance was reasonable housing, great schools, and wonderful open spaces, with Paradise Park only a couple of blocks from our home.  But three times over these past decades, the wonder that is Torrance was challenged by the stroke of a pen, threatening to place high impact facilities in the midst of our homes.  We had to fight  for our local Quality of Life.  My wife and I worked tirelessly, helping our community come together to fight forces that would bring inappropriate things into our neighborhood.  Three times, we won.

We helped lead a Citizen's group to prevent 75 oil wells in the Bishop Montgomery Sump, believing that a dense, noisy, 24-hour industrial facility emitting noxious fumes was incompatible with our quiet residential neighborhood.  The proposal was withdrawn.

We opposed closing Jefferson Middle School, and replacing it with a Criminal Rehabilitation Center, believing that a criminal facility was incompatible with a residential community.  The Facility voluntarily relocated to an industrial area, and Jefferson was reopened.

We challenged an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) permit to allow Dow Chemical to burn heavy metal contaminated solvents in Torrance, potentially releasing Dioxin (Agent Orange Poison).  After a 4 year fight, the EPA added in Dioxin monitoring, and decreased many permitted contaminants 99+%.  The whole project was then canceled, preventing an ongoing high-level pollution of our Torrance air for potentially 30 years.

I am now running for the Torrance City Council because I believe that the massive February 18, 2015 explosion at the ExxonMobil Torrance Refinery was a new game-changer, which now represents the greatest Quality of Life challenge that our Torrance residents have ever faced.

ExxonMobil admits that during the explosion, an 80,000 lb chunk of building flew nearly 100 feet, and landed about 5 feet from one of their main Hydrofluoric Acid (HF) / Modified Hydrofluoric Acid  (MHF) tanks.  The Federal Chemical Safety Board called this event a “near-miss.. to a catastrophe”. The specter of a toxic hydrofluoric acid cloud that could kill our children in their schools, suffocate our elderly in hospitals, and give able-bodied people nowhere to run, haunts me.

ExxonMobil previously told the EPA that their worst-case HF/MHF catastrophe could create an HF cloud that was miles wide, causing over 200,000 injuries in the South Bay, with other estimates showing 20,000+ deaths likely.  Before this near-miss, we could have believed that such a thing could not be.  But the February 18, 2015 refinery explosion itself also should have NEVER happened in the first place.  It tells me that we are no longer safe.  That's why I am in this race.

I say: “No more Big HF and MHF Risk.”  It is only by God's Grace, and a few extra feet of space, that we are still all here.  Our community is already on its second chance.  Time to do something else besides nothing.  Time to unite and fix this problem.  I think the City Council needs to have a Scientist on board, especially when scientific and technically laden matters come before them for judgment.  As a Scientist, I will bring my technical expertise, and a new perspective, to help the City Council make better decisions in the future, especially about the refinery, and to help remove this cloud that now looms over all Torrance.

Please Also Check Out My New Website at: "www.dr-geng.com"