NTSB Chair Blasts PG&E Record-Keeping Blunders
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The head of the National Transportation Safety Board says California utility record-keeping blunders leading up to the San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion demonstrates a need for stepped up industry safety.
Deborah Hersman, in a speech in Washington on Wednesday, says her investigators learned after the Sept. 9 explosion that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. was clueless about the characteristics of the 30-inch pipeline. Details of the speech appear in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The explosion and fire killed eight people and destroyed dozens of homes.
Hersman told the National Research Council's Transportation Research Board audience that PG&E still cannot find basic records on the manufacture and 1956 installation of the pipe.
For more than a half-century, Hersman says the utility's decisions on inspections, operating pressures and risk management were based on facts that were just plain wrong.
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