The exact corner where the San Bruno gas pipeline blew a crater in the ground was singled out by PG&E nearly two decades ago as an area of “possible slope instability” because it skirted the powerful and active San Andreas fault so closely.
But despite identifying it as a hazardous site, Pacific Gas and Electric chose not to replace that section of pipe in the mid-1990s when they replaced almost all the pipe around it.
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The third and final day of pipeline safety hearings opened Thursday morning with a discussion about how they should best be tested.The pipeline that exploded in San Bruno on Sept. 9 had been tested only with a method that could not have possibly detected the pipe’s fatal flaws, and regulators are examining whether more rigorous testing methods should be required on more of the large, high-pressure lines that run under neighborhoods in every city in America.
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By:
Caitlin Byrnes
03/03/11 8:39 AM
San Bruno residents and public safety officials were clueless about the existence of the natural-gas pipelines beneath streets and the safety risks they posed, and they even lacked training in case of emergency — such as the deadly Sept. 9 blast that killed eight and leveled an entire community.
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Fire department leaders in San Bruno had not been trained by PG&E on the natural gas lines running underneath their streets before one exploded last September, the city’s fire chief testified Wednesday.
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At 6:26 p.m. on Sept. 9, one of the operators manning PG&E’s lines in the San Francisco natural-gas control room looked at the clock and wondered why it was moving so slowly.
It had been a long day — major problems had cropped up when engineers tried to fix a broken piece of equipment in Milpitas, and it was taking serious time and attention to resolve. A colleague called up and the pair talked about the approaching quitting time, which apparently couldn’t arrive quick enough.
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In defending themselves as they were being grilled by federal investigators about a lack of automatic shut-off valves near the site of the San Bruno pipeline explosion, PG&E officials warned that abruptly stopping gas flow comes with its own set of potential dangers.
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By:
Staff and wire reports
03/01/11 10:36 PM
The raging gas fire that completely leveled a San Bruno neighborhood after a pipeline explosion in September could have been controlled sooner if automatic shutoff valves had been installed, it was revealed at a federal hearing Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
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Federal investigators are grilling PG&E officials Tuesday morning on the company’s response to the Sept. 9 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, its risk management programs, and the impact automatic or remote shut-off valves could have had on reducing the damage.
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Federal authorities probing last year’s San Bruno gas pipeline explosion plan to release thousands of pages of investigative records next week as they kick off three days of high--profile, fact-finding- hearings on the deadly disaster.
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