Personal Injury Blog

NTSB Releases Documents on San Bruno Gas Pipeline Explosion

July 26th, 2011
San Bruno Gas Line Explosion

Pipeline safety is a crucial issue in California

The National Transportation Safety Board has released more than 4,000 pages of documents related to the San Bruno gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people last year.  The documents confirm to Los Angeles pipeline explosion attorneys the severe errors that were made and the pipeline flaws that ultimately contributed to the explosion.

The documents were released by federal investigators on Thursday.  They contain information about the flawed welds in the pipeline, which was operated by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.  On September 9, 2010, a stretch of pipeline running under a neighborhood in San Bruno exploded, setting dozens of homes on fire.  The massive fireball that resulted caused severe property damage.  Eight people were killed in the explosion.  Several others suffered serious burn injuries.  Close to ninety-five homes were destroyed, or partially damaged in the explosion.

The explosion was blamed on a pipeline seam weld.  Initially, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. claimed that the well was seamless, but investigators soon found otherwise.  Now, the National Transportation Safety Board has released more than 2,000 of pages of documents that show that the 10-inch long section of pipeline had several flaws.

The National Transportation Safety Board  also contains a report by a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. mechanic He told the Board that in 1992, while he was employed as a apprentice, he had been working on a transmission pipe close to the one that exploded in San Bruno, and had found defective seam welds.  However, it’s not clear whether the transmission line that he was working on was the same one that exploded in September.

Investigators have found that the pipeline broke apart when a seam weld ruptured.  They also found that portions of the transmission line that exploded were full of defective welded seams.  Since the information about the defective welds came to light,  federal investigators have been worried about the state of the rest of Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s pipeline network.  Further, company records showed that the same transmission line that exploded had a history of bad welds located in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Sunnyvale.

Pipeline safety is a crucial issue in California, because these high transmission gas pipelines run across heavily populated neighborhoods and residential areas.  When these pipelines were laid, they traversed across sparsely populated regions, but as the years have gone by, more and more people have been placed in proximity to these pipelines.  Any negligence on the part of utility companies can have tragic consequences as demonstrated in the San Bruno explosion.

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