Do the Residents of San Bruno need Erin Brockovich?

September 17th, 2010. By LucyC

We all read with horror the accounts of the massive San Bruno explosion on September 9th that rocked an entire California suburb, killed four people (at last count), vaporized 38 homes, damaged a further 120 and pretty much laid waste to the surrounding 15 acres of land. Residents were ordered to evacuate, many lucky to have escaped with their lives. 

The explosion took place at dinner time, 6:24 pm, on a Thursday evening. It was caused by a rupture in a natural gas line that ran underneath the community. According to reports, the residents had complained to the utility company that they had smelt gas prior to the explosion—days prior in some cases. 

You may be interested to know that the utility company that owns the gas pipeline is none other than Pacific Gas and Electric, or PG&E. Ringing any bells? Remember Erin Brockovich? She took PG&E on over the deadly toxic waste called hexavalent chromium that the company was illegally dumping and which, in turn, was essentially poisoning residents in an area of southern California. People were dying of cancer, in fact. Brockovich, immortalized by Julia Roberts in the blockbuster movie of the same name, discovered that PG&E was trying to buy land that was contaminated by hexavalent chromium. To make a long story short—Brockovich and the people she represented won the day—but it took some doing. 

Now, to be clear, I’m not saying that the San Bruno explosion was caused by some kind of oversight, deliberate or otherwise, by PG&E, but if the company had received reports from residents of natural gas odors, were they investigated prior to the explosion? 

Adding to the mix, there do appear to be complicating factors in that some local sewer lines appear to have been replaced which may have led to destabilization of the gas pipeline. According to the Mercury News (09/12/10), construction company D’Arcy and Harty Construction was hired to replace the underground sewer lines. They reportedly did so using a technique that can cause ground shaking and soil disruption. The National Transportation Safety Board is now investigating whether this could have caused enough damage to the pipelines to result in the explosion. 

PG&E did reportedly inspect their gas lines prior to and following the sewer line overhaul. And in a press statement on their website, they state, “In 2009 alone, we completed 1.9 million on-location service line inspections as part of the company’s initiative to survey our entire gas distribution network on an accelerated basis.

In addition, two days after the incident in San Bruno, we began surveying the three transmission lines that feed the San Francisco Peninsula. As an added safety measure, we have also reduced pressure by 10 percent on these three lines.”  But again, I ask, did they follow-up prior to the explosion, on the reports of gas odors in the neighborhood? Certainly they are now. And, they have set up a “Rebuild San Bruno Fund”, which “will make available up to $100 million for the residents and city of San Bruno to help rebuild.” 

This sounds a little like BP’s Gulf Oil Disaster fund in which it agreed to pony up $20 billion for damage claims for lost livelihoods stemming from the worst oil spill in American history—the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig off the coast of Louisiana. 

While these sums seem large—generous even—in the context of preventable disasters they are band-aids. What’s that old saying—an ounce of prevention? But perhaps that’s just a tad too utopian given the era we’re living in. Which means it is up to the Erin Brockovich’s of the world to try and ensure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.

Tags: Erin Brockovich, Gas Explosion, PG&E, San Bruno

This was posted on Friday, September 17th, 2010 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Environment . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.