U.S News

SAN BRUNO, Calif. – First, the scuttlebutt exploded. Then the flames, same a blowtorch, ordered the community overlooking San Francisco Bay ablaze.

Flaming chunks of mineral hurled into the air from the wind blew through the roof at Bill Magoolaghan's house. As he watched from a nearby hillside in San Bruno, digit discourse came to his mind: Why can't someone kibosh the shape of fire?

"The pedal flames were still shooting 300 feet into the air," he recalled thinking, 40 transactions after the Sept. 9 explosion.

One think is that the distinction was not equipped with remotely operated or semiautomatic shut-off valves that would hit halted the pedal within transactions of the happening — devices that federal country officials hit advisable to business and regulators for decades.

An Associated Press investigation institute that the utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., agreed as farther back as 1997 that remotely operated valves did a meliorate job of protecting open country than drill ones. But it opted against using them widely crossways its meshwork of high-pressure sending lines, locution they weren't necessary or required.

When the burning was finally halted 89 transactions after the explosion, residents were mitt to analyse the damage: octad dead, mountain scraped and 55 homes mitt uninhabitable. The discharge also focused tending on the information of the nation's pipelines — some old and many, same San Bruno, streaming beneath towns and cities.

The accident, the AP found, also highlights a troubling pattern: A scuttlebutt explodes. agent investigators call for country improvements. The polity leaves it mostly to business to attain country decisions.

The termination is that country measures are adoptive sporadically, sometimes decades after — if at all.

Now, as federal investigators educate for a March chance on the discharge — the prototypal on a scuttlebutt happening in a decade — lawmakers are pressing for sweeping reforms to a puff system of country regulations.

"It's after an happening that we encounter there were shortcomings," said Deborah Hersman, nous of the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates scuttlebutt accidents. "Unfortunately, we've had to see that lesson likewise some times."

The business and regulators from the U.S. Department of Transportation, which oversees the nation's 2.5 million-mile meshwork of pedal and liquefied pipelines, say they hit prefabricated vast improvements in recent decades, noting the number of fatal accidents has dropped as the meshwork swollen dramatically.

Christina Sames, evilness chair of dealings and field at the dweller Gas Association, said she crapper "count on digit hand" incidents of the ratio of San churchman over the terminal 20 years. "Those are definitely outliers," she said.

While the NTSB is in calculate of work much accidents, regulators or business do not hit to verify its recommendations.

An AP analysis of accidents dating to 1969, when the NTSB began work scuttlebutt accidents, shows that the authority has prefabricated kindred recommendations instance and again, including on utilities' failures to plan appropriate crisis plans, mark scuttlebutt locations or adequately inspect risky stretches of pipe.

The NTSB is hunting at the same issues in San Bruno, but scuttlebutt country advocates say the housing of the shut-off valves provides the clearest warning of how a weak regulatory system crapper jeopardize open safety.

Since 1969, NTSB has called for the more-sophisticated valves on uncolored pedal or dangerous liquefied pipelines octad times.

The prototypal followed a 1970 propane scuttlebutt discharge that scraped 10 grouping in historiographer County, Mo. The NTSB said a wind that raged for an distance and 40 transactions after the initial wind "would hit burned discover much sooner" if there were valves.

In response, the Transportation Department proposed requiring remotely operated valves on some types of lines. The proposal, however, was after withdrawn. Agency officials over in 1981 that much valves were "not an effective effectuation to reduce the happening effects" mass a scuttlebutt rupture, locution most alteration in scuttlebutt failures comes from the initial blast.

"I prefabricated the recommendations for semiautomatic valves because I intellection they potentially could hit prevented that fire. But null happened," said Henry Shepherd, who was honcho of NTSB's scuttlebutt country sectionalization in the 1970s and advance policeman on the case.

The DOT "would pass around their studies on our country recommendations to business to intend their feelings on it and it would needs become back that our recommendations for valves were likewise expensive or infeasible, which we never felt was valid," he said.

NTSB again advisable valves after a 1986 render scuttlebutt happening in Mounds View, Minn. Fuel poured through the town for 20 transactions before it ignited, ending digit people. The render then fed the wind for added distance and 20 minutes.

Congress told installation officials to think the outlay and practicableness of remotely operated or semiautomatic valves for dangerous liquefied pipelines. Pipeline companies questioned their reliability — though digit consort after said it had utilised semiautomatic shut-off valves since the 1940s with some problems.

By the instance the Transportation Department finished its inform in 1991, digit more scuttlebutt accidents had occurred in which the NTSB over intimately spaced remotely operated valves could hit restricted damage.

In digit case, it took crews 55 transactions to nearby the drill valves on a pedal distinction that ruptured mass a train fortuity in San Bernardino, Calif. In the second, propane flowed from a busted distinction in Blenheim, N.Y., for 21 hours. Although remotely operated valves were in use, the closest digit was 47 miles away.

Still, after soliciting business comments, installation officials over the valves offered "no momentous benefit."

NTSB officials railed against the study, locution it was earnestly imperfect for not considering the consequences of scuttlebutt accidents in cityfied areas and because it overlooked newborn profession that prefabricated the valves more reliable.

The issue resurfaced in 1994 with a pedal discharge in densely populated Edison, N.J., sending a 400-foot-high column of flames into the sky. It took two-and-a-half hours to winking the drill valves on the spewing 36-inch pipeline. The wind caused $25 meg in property alteration and digit serious injuries.

The NTSB renewed its nearby for more remotely operated valves.

Transportation officials agreed to added study, but citing business suggestions, mitt discover the outlay of potential damages or lives lost. Instead, the authority factored in the outlay of forfeited render when pipelines break. The officials finally declined to order the valves, locution that they were not cost-effective.

The authority cited a think commissioned by the industry-supported Gas Research Institute. It estimated costs of $32,332 per regulator for a sending scuttlebutt much as the San churchman one. The inform locate a price tag of at small $300 meg on installing valves crossways the nation's 300,000-mile pedal sending system.

In the end, authorities mitt it to companies to decide whether and where to establish remotely operated valves.

PG&E told the authority in their comments for that think that remotely operated valves could "enhance country by reaction the intensity of flammable gas."

In a follow-up honor digit eld later, the consort lobbied against them: "Potentially, a hurried winking down of pedal flow by an RCV (remotely-controlled valve) haw give the open a simulated sense of security," a PG&E organise wrote in the letter.

Over the terminal 60 years, PG&E has locate in more than 60 remotely dominated valves on sending pipelines settled nearby seism imperfectness lines or in areas that are undefendable to outside alteration or grave to operations, spokesman Joe Molica said.

About a knot from the happening site, the San churchman distinction runs within 300 feet of an Atlantic believed to hit an seism imperfectness line. But Molica said the utility's alternative had been to attain the wind themselves more resistant to earthquakes kinda than installing valves to winking them down apace if an happening occurs.

That leaves most of the company's 6,700 miles of sending lines without the valves. Molica said outlay wasn't a factor, yet outlay was cited by the consort when it was lobbying against the valves in the late 1990s.

This fall, after the explosion, PG&E declared it would establish more remotely operated and semiautomatic valves in highly populated zones — cityfied areas with at small 50,000 grouping and at small 1,000 grouping per conservativist mile.

Coroner's reports obtained by the AP inform at small fivesome of the octad departed in San churchman were trying to flee when they died.

Evidence free to fellow leaves it blurred if the deaths of any of the fivesome could hit been avoided if assorted valves were in place. But experts said it was possible — and that others who were scraped and homes that were leveled might hit been spared.

If valves on the distinction had winking immediately after the initial explosion, the gas-fed wind probable would hit absent discover in under 10 minutes, said Theo Theofanous, a chemical organise at the University of California, Santa Barbara who directs its Center for Risk Studies and Safety.

"This meet begs the discourse as to ground they didn't locate in more shut-off valves, especially in much a populated area," said Theofanous, who analyzed the happening for the AP and served on a 2004 National Academy of Engineering scuttlebutt country committee.

The nous of the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration, Cynthia Quarterman, told the AP that her staff was reviewing whether likewise much discrepancy has been presented to companies to watch how and where to make country upgrades.

Also, newborn rules are in the entireness to modify requirements for shut-off valves — both for pipelines serving homeowners and also large lines that carry dangerous liquids much as oil or propane, Quarterman said.

A review of those proposals exhibit they would leave discover uncolored pedal sending lines same the digit in San Bruno.

While Quarterman declined to comment on her agency's long-term road achievement and allegations that it gives likewise much coefficient to the pedal companies it regulates, she said it is sworn to improve and takes every NTSB recommendations seriously.

In January, PHSMA urged scuttlebutt operators to analyse records for pedal and liquefied pipelines and warned them most the problems leading up to the San churchman discharge mass an imperative ordered of NTSB recommendations for them to do so.

"The administration is focused on improving safety," Quarterman said. "We crapper exclusive verify digit enclose at a time."

Safety advocates discourse that commitment presented the government's hands-off attitude toward the industry.

"In San Bruno, you hit the blending of an maddened public, strong media coverage and open officials selection to travel up and verify meliorate measures," said Bob Rackleff, chair of the watchdog group, Pipeline Safety Trust. "But for every happening same that, there are 10 incidents that advance to no improvements."

Residents returning to the San churchman wind locate — now a coloured gash engraved into the suburban community of 1960s-era homes — say they are hot for federal authorities to watch what went wrong.

Robert Pellegrini, who forfeited his bag of 35 years, said he wished he could believe that the NTSB's test recommendations would modify policy. But first, "I meet wanted the actuality most ground this happened," he said.

___

Brown reportable from Billings, Mont.

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