San Bruno Blast: 7 Now Dead, Pipeline Was 'Risky'
SAN BRUNO (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) - Search teams discovered the remains Saturday of three more people killed in a Sun Bruno neighborhood devastated by a thunderous pipeline explosion, authorities told CBS 5, raising the death toll from four to seven.
As many as five people were still missing Saturday, San Bruno police chief Neil Telford said; nearly 60 others were injured in Thursday evening's blast that wiped out numerous homes in the Crestmoor Canyon neighborhood near Skyline Boulevard and San Bruno Avenue.
Just two days after the gas line ruptured and ignited a towering fireball, state and federal authorities said that particular section of pipeline was ranked as high risk because it ran through a highly populated area.
The blast has also raised questions about the safety of similar lines that crisscross towns across America.
One of the victims killed in the inferno worked for the commission reviewing Pacific Gas & Electric's investment plans to upgrade its natural gas lines, including another risky section of the same pipeline within miles of her home, a colleague confirmed.
Longtime California Public Utilities Commission analyst Jacqueline Greig and her 13-year-old daughter Janessa died in the massive explosion, which left a crater near their house and laid waste to dozens of 1960s-era homes in the hills of San Bruno overlooking San Francisco Bay.
Jessica Morales, 20, was also killed in the explosion and fire. One other victim found earlier hadn't yet been identified, and authorities were trying to identify the new remains found Saturday.
Greig spent part of the summer evaluating PG&E's expansion plans and investment proposals to replace out-of-date pipes, as part of the utility's overall bid to raise consumers' rates, co-worker Pearlie Sabino said.
Sabino and Greig were members of a small commission team that advocates for consumer and environmental protections pertaining to natural gas.
"It's just so shocking because she was one of the ones who was most closely involved with this kind of work," said Mike Florio, an attorney with the Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco advocacy group who worked with Greig. "Little did we know that pipe was near Jackie's own neighborhood."
Among the paperwork PG&E submitted for hearings with regulators was a document ranking a section of the same gas line about two and half miles from the blast as within "the top 100 highest risk line sections" in the utility's entire service territory, documents showed.
The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration classified the 30-inch diameter transmission line, which ran for about a mile and a half near Greig's home, as a "high consequence area" requiring more stringent inspections called integrity assessments, agency spokeswoman Julia Valentine said. Nationwide, only about 7 percent of gas lines have that classification, she said.
The state commission gave that section of pipe the same classification and had conducted audits on that stretch, spokeswoman Terrie Prosper said. PG&E also had conducted leak surveys, evaluations and patrols on the gas line, she said.
Saturday, California Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, who is serving as acting governor while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger travels in Asia, directed the commission to perform integrity assessments of all pipeline segments located in the impacted area.
Maldonado also ordered further inspections and surveys for high consequence areas, including a detailed inspection of three transmission lines that run through San Mateo County.
Some residents said they smelled gas in the neighborhood over the past several weeks. The utility said it was checking its records for the complaints, but added that none of its crews were at work on the line Thursday.
The PUC established a toll-free number and e-mail address for residents to indicate if they noticed a gas smell prior to the explosion. People sould call (800) 789-0550 or send an e-mail to SBFire@cpuc.ca.gov or sanbruno@ntsb.gov.
Compared to the tens of thousands of miles of gas pipelines across the country, accidents like the one occuring in San Bruno are relatively rare.
In 2009, there were 163 significant accidents involving natural gas pipelines, killing 10 people and injuring 59.
Transmission lines like the one that burst in San Bruno deliver natural gas from its source to distribution lines, which then carry it into neighborhoods before branching off into homes.
Over the past two decades, federal officials tallied 2,840 significant gas pipeline accidents nationwide — including 992 in which someone was killed or required hospitalization, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Those accidents killed 323 people and injured 1,372.
Experts said the nation's 296,000 miles of onshore natural-gas lines routinely suffer breakdowns and failures.
More than 60 percent of the lines are 40 years old or older and almost half were installed in the 1950s and 1960s, according to a recent analysis by the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Bellingham, Wash.
Most of the older pipelines lack anticorrosion coatings that are prevalent in the industry today, said Carl Weimer, executive director of the trust, which was set up following a 1999 explosion that killed three people in Bellingham.
"The industry always says that if you take care of pipelines, they'll last forever," Weimer said. "But what we see over and over again is companies are not doing that and corrosion and other factors are causing failures."
And once a high-pressure pipeline fails, he added, anything can trigger a deadly blast. A cigarette or rocks smashing as high-pressure gas shoots by. Even someone answering a cell phone can cause a spark, because it is battery-powered, Weimer said.
Meantime, a group of local, state and federal officials toured the damaged San Bruno area on Saturday and described it as a ghost-town full of remnants of cars melted in driveways and pieces of houses, some left with just the chimney standing.
Besides the 40 homes leveled by the blast, seven were severely damaged, while dozens of other houses suffered less severe damage in the fire that sped across 15 acres.
Police officers said they were focusing their search for missing people to three specific areas: the 1600 block of Claremont Drive, the 1100 block of Fairmont Drive, and the 1700 block of Earl Avenue.
Cadaver dogs had nine "hits" at seven homes, but authorities said the scents could have come from dead animals or other sources.
"Some (of the scents) may be people we haven't found yet," but that has yet to be determined, said San Mateo County coroner's deputy Michelle Rippy.
Residents of roughly 270 homes that had been off-limits following the blaze would be allowed to return for good starting around noon on Sunday, San Bruno City Manager Connie Jackson said. Some residents were authorized to enter a limited area Saturday to retrieve belongings.
Michelle Salinda's home was destroyed in the fire, but her husband, Ricardo, and 15-year-old son were able to escape. She said she wants to return to what's left of her home to find closure.
"I can't wait to see it, even though it's all destroyed, because I know that's where I am going to start again," she said.
Ricardo Salinda described a harrowing scene as he and his son escaped from a 200-foot fireball racing toward the front door of their home. The two suffered burns as they fled the flames.
They used a ladder to scale a neighbor's fence but it was too hot there, and Salinda said he lifted his 120-pound son over the next fence and scrambled after him.
"I don't know how I was able to lift him," he said. "It's a blessing we got out."
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