"Be glad PG&E spent millions to defeat hypothetical public power initiatives, instead of fixing fifty-year-old pipes or whatever... Officials said 38 homes had been destroyed, with many more damaged... Four people are reported dead... Some residents told reporters they had smelled gas in the neighborhood in the days preceding the explosion. Like BP before them, PG&E has launched their own internal investigation."I wonder if there had been some minor, undetected damage from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that slowly got worse with the years. Right now, who knows? Nevertheless, PG&E has spent too much trying to crush public-power initiatives (with the game-changing, California-constitution-changing Proposition 16 that barely failed to pass in the last election, or the successful 2008 effort to prevent Yolo County from defecting to Sacramento's SMUD) and way too little on maintenance of powerline right-of-ways (which prevents forest fires), and the like, and it would be no surprise if they were lacking on the gas-pipeline-inspection job too.
Public power works best for consumers! The 2001 California electricity crisis demonstrated that private utilities look after themselves first when times get hard. This explosion may yet reveal the same, general pattern in other arenas. Hooray for SMUD, and related public power utilities in the state, like those in Roseville and Los Angeles!
At SF Gate:
Representatives of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said they did not know what caused a 30-inch, high-pressure gas pipeline to rupture at about 6:15 p.m. Thursday, setting off a firestorm that destroyed 37 homes in the Crestmoor neighborhood west of Interstate 280 and badly damaged eight others. Scores of people were treated at hospitals, and at least three were in critical condition Friday.
Officials said they had no estimate yet on the financial cost of the disaster. But the personal cost was immense.
The San Mateo County coroner identified two of the dead as Jacqueline Greig, 44, and her 13-year-old daughter, Janessa, whose house at 1670 Claremont Drive was destroyed.
Greig worked for the California Public Utilities Commission for 21 years and was a member of its Division of Ratepayer Advocates. She also was listed as a member of the natural gas committee on the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates.
"It's really unbelievably ironic," said Mindy Spatt, spokeswoman for TURN, an independent advocacy group for utility customers.
Marcel Hawiger, an advocate with TURN, said he knew Greig for a decade.
"She has been a tireless and wonderful advocate for consumers for many years. I'm just devastated - this is such a tragedy," Hawiger said.
Greig reviewed data that PG&E used to justify gas rates and reviewed energy projects to see if they were cost effective. One of the projects she was involved with was how PG&E went about charging for inspection of transmission pipes.
"She was such a nice person," Hawiger said, "She was always such a pleasure to work with."
...PG&E was at the center of the investigation into how its pipeline failed. The pipe was a main transmission line that fed off to smaller distribution lines, which then branch into homes.
When it blew up Thursday evening at Claremont and Glenview drives, it left a 30-foot-wide crater. A large section of the pipe was hurled from the ground, "indicating great magnitude," said Christopher Hart, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.
It took crews at least a half-hour to shut down the gas flow to the broken line.
Geological reports registered a shaker of 1.3 magnitude at the time of the explosion, which officials believe was from the pipeline detonating.
Several residents have said they smelled gas in the neighborhood in the days before the explosion and that PG&E trucks had been in the area. Utility President Chris Johns said he could not confirm that, but that PG&E was checking its records.
...Haag said the devastation was like nothing he'd seen in his 31 years as a firefighter.
The explosion damaged a water main in the area, making it harder for firefighters to fight the blaze, Haag said. Firefighters had to skip over hydrants and lay longer sections of hose, he said.
"I lost count of how much hose I drove over last night," Haag said. "You're not supposed to do that, but sometimes you can't avoid it. Adapt and overcome, that's our motto."
Among those promising to investigate the blast are state legislators, and the San Bruno Police Department is treating the area as a crime scene - another reason residents were not being allowed back in.
"Until we know what caused it, we want to preserve anything of evidentiary value," Telford said.
Some residents were losing patience. Many who took refuge at a nearby shelter had no idea what happened to their homes.
No comments:
Post a Comment