Almost four years ago, a massive gas explosion killed eight people and injured 66 more in San Bruno, California. Civil Gas and Electric, the utility that was responsible, has been found to have grossly neglected its gas delivery infrastructure. Nonetheless, neighboring cities are continuing to have problems getting TG&E to set its profit margins aside, do the right thing and repair its delivery infrastructure. The utility has admitted that it doesn't even know the safety status of nearly twenty percent of its gas pipelines, and judging by its track record, even that claim may be dubious.
The conduct of the utility is so egregious and reckless that the city itself had to establish a website called www.gaspipelinesafety.org in order to petition the California Public Utilities Commission to take drastic action against the utility to force it to do the right thing to prevent additional massive tragedies such as the one in San Bruno from happening again. The public petition is seeking to have the state authorities penalize the shareholders of PG&E as opposed to the rate payers, to punish the responsible parties for what happened and try to prevent future misdeeds, as well as to assign an independent monitor to act as a state-wide safety watchdog in the area of natural gas delivery, and, most importantly, to prevent the state regulators who are supposed to keep tabs on the companies' behavior from developing "cozy relationships" and conflicts of interest with the utility companies. A federal investigation identified these "cozy relationships" as contributing factors to the disaster in San Bruno that resulted in so many deaths, injuries and severe burns to the victims.
The disaster in California has implications for folks here in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania who are dealing with gas explosions more and more often, because of the fracking boom, gas well drilling generally and the transition away from coal towards natural gas and propane as major fuels for home heating. One hopes that accountability is enforced in the Ohio Valley before a massive disaster, such as the San Bruno gas explosion, occurs in this part of our country.
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