Bakersfield Blast Has Similarities to San Bruno Pipeline Explosion

A pipeline blast in a rural area near Bakersfield is again raising fears that the deadly San Bruno explosion last year wasn’t an anomaly. 

Monday’s explosion happened when a milelong section of gas transmission line in an alfalfa field in Kern ruptured after PG&E began testing the pipe with water at a high pressure to check the line’s operating pressure, the Bakersfield Californian reported. The test was part of work PG&E has been required to do by the California Public Utilities Commission following the San Bruno explosion to test 150 miles of pipeline that are similar in age and characteristics to Line 132, the pipe the ruptured in the Crestmoor neighborhood. 

No one was injured in the Bakersfield blast, according to the Californian. But the way in which the pipe tore open was strikingly similar to the rupture in San Bruno: through under high pressure.

The paper said in an editorial that the pipe’s failure should serve as a reminder that another San Bruno blast is inevitable unless PG&E and other pipeline operators take heed to the lessons learned from Sept. 9, 2010: 

The explosion near Bakersfield is a reminder that dangerous pipelines exist in both rural and urban areas. Daunting as the challenge may be, PG&E must continue to evaluate all of those potentially at risk because of age. If anyone had any doubts that a second San Bruno-like incident was possible almost anywhere in California, Monday's explosion provides a resounding affirmation. 

In fact, this isn’t the first time in the last year or so that another gas transmission line explosion has happened. 

In February, a natural gas explosion in Allentown, PA, killed five people and destroyed two houses. A month before that, a 12-inch gas main exploded in a residential neighborhood in Philadelphia, killing one person and injuring six others, the New York Times reported. In December 2010, a gas main explosion destroyed a furniture store in Wayne, MI, and left two people dead, according to the Times.

According to the Pipeline Safety Trust, there also have been explosions in Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa and Washington. In August, a natural gas distribution line .