Crime & Safety

PG&E Got Gas Leak Complaints in 2008 Fatal Explosion

Neighbor of man killed in Rancho Cordova said he still hasn't received restitution from PG&E for damage his home sustained in Christmas Eve explosion.

A suburban Sacramento man who narrowly escaped a natural gas pipe blast two years ago said he knows what nervous survivors of the San Bruno explosion are going through as they get settled back into their homes and routines.

Patrick Grant, a retired plumber, lives a few houses away from a Rancho Cordova home that was blown sky high on Christmas Eve 2008 when a teenage girl lit of cigarette near a previously reported gas leak.

A resident of the home, 72-year-old Wilbert Paana, was killed. He was standing in his front doorway and had just spoken to a PG&E technician who responded to the leak call. The teen, his granddaughter, was severely burned, along with her 42-year-old mother.

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Upon hearing the San Bruno news last Thursday night, Grant said his reaction was, "It just happened again."  His house sustained thousands of dollars in damage when  the explosion turned Paana's home into shrapnel that sprayed nearby houses. Grant's garage door was ruined, his front door blown in and two windows shattered.

He is still trying to get restitution for the damage, he said.

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"Considering the last one cost them millions of dollars, I hope they do something that really changes things," Grant said of PG&E. "But I don't know if they will unless they're forced to. Sometimes it's cheaper to let these things happen and just pay the fines and damages."

The attorney for the Paana family survivors, Robert Buccola, said he has already been contacted by attorneys representing San Bruno families who are trying to arrange restitution for their losses.

Kimberly Dickson, Paana's daughter, and her daughter, Sunny Dickson, are recovering from their burns and settled out of court a wrongful death claim with PG&E. Buccola did not disclose the terms of the 2009 settlement.

Of the San Bruno blast, Buccola said, "As far as the whodunit part, once we knew it was not an earthquake or something involving a plane or something that traumatized that (gas) line, my first suspicion was that it was corrosive changes in the pipe's quality," he said. "When all the dust settles, I'm confident it will be found to be a decaying line that should have been replaced years ago."

According to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board, the lead inspecting agency for major gas pipeline blasts,  the source of the Rancho Cordova explosion was a 1 ¼-inch pipe installed in 1977 and repaired in 2006. It was delivering gas at about 55-60 pounds per square inch of pressure — miniscule compared to the 30-inch San Bruno pipe that exploded — and developed a leak where two pipes were joined. The post-blast evaluation concluded that the short section of polyethylene piping that failed was unmarked and out of specification because it did not meet wall thickness standards.

"We used to make jokes in the neighborhood that it was leaking again," Grant said. "They replaced about a third of his lawn because the leak had killed his grass. The year that it happened, he had been calling at least every other week. So I was not surprised at all when it blew up."

Particularly aggravating for the neighborhood, Grant said, was that it had taken nearly three hours for PG&E personnel to get to the scene after the leak was determined to be significant and potentially dangerous. A PG&E foreman and investigator were at the house when the blast occurred at 1:35 p.m., and no one had been told to evacuate the area following higher-than-normal readings taken by a technician more than two hours earlier.

The NTSB report on the blast said that PG&E received no complaints of leaks or odors in the neighborhood between the 2006 repair and the 2008 explosion, contradicting Grant's account. In May 2008, the California Public Utilities commission audited PG&E and found several code violations for the reporting and grading of leaks. It ordered PG&E to review its procedures on gas leak responses to make sure personnel had the proper training and equipment.

In a response to the NTSB report, PG&E promised to address the problems. Among the new policies put in place was a requirement that structures be evacuated and taped off when minor leaks are being investigated.

Buccola said part of the Paana/Dickson settlement with PG&E was the sharing of call logs about reported gas leaks in the area and an agreement by the utility to inspect and fix any location where similar 1 ¼-inch pipe was installed in the greater Sacramento area.

"There were 70-some sites, and it took them quite a period to do that," Buccola said. "If you don't make them do that, utilities will just do the minimum that's required."

Grant blames PG&E for not taking enough time to train its crews and believes the San Bruno explosion is probably the result of the same lackadaisical methods.

"They're not putting any money into that anymore," he said. "So I expect these kinds of things to keep happening. Infrastructure problems are going to happen more and more. As I talk to people (about San Bruno), we're just shaking our heads."

Grant said he doesn't really have any advice for San Bruno residents swirling in the blast aftermath. "Good luck fighting a company as large as PG&E," he said. "They could prolong this thing forever."

The Dicksons are intensely private and want to avoid any more media attention, Buccola said.

"They are picking the pieces up," he said. "It really takes a long time to put the pieces of your life back."


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