Operators also send gadgets known as "smart pigs” through the line to check whether the pipe is riddled with leaks or has welding defects like the one that caused the San Bruno explosion. “You had the leadership of the California Public Utilities Commission essentially in bed with the utility. GET BREAKING NEWS IN YOUR BROWSER. "As San Bruno residents mark another year, PG&E, regulators and California ratepayers still face a long road before the utility's natural gas pipeline system is fully tested and modernized. Former commission president Michael Peevey — whose emails revealed, among other things, that he’d discussed commission business with Cherry “over two bottles of good pinot” at a vacation spot in Sonoma -- decided not to seek reappointment when his term ended at the end of 2014.“I would be surprised if all the bad apples are gone,” Clark says. In fact, investigators later found, it was a badly welded collection of pipe segments installed in 1956.When the pipeline finally gave way at 6:11 p.m., the gas it was carrying fueled an explosion that left a 72-foot-long crater and hurled a 3,000-pound segment of pipeline 100 feet through the air.The blast was just the opening act. “I was just sitting in my room. But confusion reigned amid reports that a plane had crashed or a gas station had blown up in the area. Oregon authorities open arson probe into deadly wildfire The company's customers are likely to pay the lion's share — though just how much is a decision that rests with the CPUC.Jackson, San Bruno’s city manager, still believes that stronger reforms are in order before the utility and its regulators are really functioning properly.“It’s been five years,” she says. Earlier this year, the Five years after the disaster, the company is still in the midst of the laborious process of ensuring its pipeline network is safe. In fact, the NTSB found that PG&E was the only utility in the country that was spiking pressure.Clark told the safety board that “artificially raising the pressure in a pipe that has identified integrity seam issues seems to be a wrong-headed approach to safety.”Failure analyst Stevick says the pressure spikes "almost certainly" damaged the pipeline in San Bruno.On the utility side, PG&E’s gas-safety department has many new faces in 2015. The utility giant was convicted of six felony charges connected to the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion. Technicians monitor live feeds from Cal Fire, and watch as PG&E crews move throughout the state.Out in the field, meanwhile, pipeline testing is underway.Austin Hastings, a lanky engineer clad in a PG&E hardhat and orange safety vest, gestures to a huge contraption mounted on a flatbed truck. “In the past, there were other things that came first. We're standing in the street looking at the biggest fire I've ever seen in my life and there's no one here.' "It was pretty devastating. Pipeline is visible on the left. “The San Bruno gas explosion was a terrible tragedy and we continue to mourn the eight lives that were lost, the many more who were injured, and the damage that the community sustained.”In 2012, PG&E opened a state-of-the-art gas operations center in San Ramon, creating a high-tech complex that would enable the utility to manage its gas system in a real-time.Adding to the gas system improvements: PG&E has replaced more than 270 miles of gas pipelines, has reduced its average response times from 33.3 minutes in 2010 to 20.4 minutes in 2020, and has conducted strength tests on more than 1,500 miles of gas pipes.Rene Morales, a San Bruno resident whose daughter Jessica was killed in the San Bruno explosion, is skeptical that PG&E really has learned the lessons arising from the deadly blast.“I don’t see where PG&E has reorganized enough to make an impact,” Morales said.
In March 2014, for instance, a cottage blew up in Carmel after a utility welding crew accidentally punctured a plastic pipe, triggering a gas leak that fueled a blaze ignited by a pilot light.
natural gas transmission line exploded in San Bruno, California. At least four people were killed and 52 injured in the gas pipeline explosion and fire that rocked a San Bruno neighborhood as investigators Friday tried to determine what caused the devastating blast that left a crater in the ground and homes smoldering.
Seven new deaths reported in Butte County wildfire “And I think that we in San Bruno and throughout California should be able to expect tangible demonstration of real, true reform that allows us to see that our regulators are on it, that they’re proactively demanding accountability and holding themselves and the utilities responsible in a real strong and clear way. The community is still recovering from the trauma.The disaster and all the subsequent investigations and disclosures prompt the question: Are Californians safer from a pipeline disaster now than the day Line 132 blew up in San Bruno?The blast exposed the utility's haphazard system of record keeping for its tens of thousands of miles of gas pipelines and its sometimes shoddy construction and inspection practices.
He says he's still haunted by the deaths of his co-worker and her daughter.Weeks after the disaster, Clark says he was preparing to testify about it before the U.S. Senate.