Politics & Government

San Bruno Explosion to Be Main Topic at Pipeline Safety Conference

Mayor Jim Ruane, City Manager Connie Jackson and others are expected to give the local perspective at the Pipeline Safety Trust's annual conference about how the city was affected by the pipeline explosion.

Mayor Jim Ruane is heading to New Orleans this week to speak about the Sept. 9, 2010, pipeline explosion and tell the city’s story to a group of pipeline industry executives, pipeline safety advocates and government officials. 

Ruane will be one of the local officials at the conference, being put on by the Pipeline Safety Trust, an organization formed after the 1999 gasoline explosion in Bellingham, WA, that left three people dead and millions of dollars in damage. The goal of the organization since that explosion has been to bring pipeline operators, regulators and advocates together to promote pipeline safety and prevent further accidents. 

Unfortunately, pipeline explosions still occur, as witnessed last year in the Crestmoor neighborhood, where eight people lost their lives and 38 families lost their homes after a faulty PG&E gas transmission line ruptured and set off a firestorm. 

Find out what's happening in San Brunowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

That is why there is much anticipation about this year’s conference, said Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Carl Weimer. The title of the conference is “Pipeline Safety—Getting to Zero,” in which the participants will be taking a deeper look into accountability when people often say the primary safety goal in the industry is to have zero incidents. 

“Last year, it was so close to the San Bruno tragedy. The causes hadn’t been put out there yet, and people were so tragically impacted that we weren’t able to get the whole San Bruno perspective,” Weimer said. (I about how Patch covered the explosion from the community news perspective.) “This year, we’re hoping to build on it and say, ‘Here’s what the community learned.’ Then we’ll have the 30,000-foot look at it and say, ‘OK, now that we know what happened in San Bruno, what does that mean for pipeline safety?’” 

Find out what's happening in San Brunowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Ruane will speak Thursday about what the public has learned a year after the explosion here. He will be joined by City Manager Connie Jackson, who is expected to speak about how the city worked with other agencies to push the recovery effort forward after the fire. Rene Morales, whose daughter in the fire, is also expected to speak, as well as San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken. 

, PG&E’s executive vice president of gas operations, is also expected to speak on a panel at the conference. 

Ruane said he will especially be eager to hear about the progress the pipeline industry has made since the San Bruno explosion and that hopefully other companies are following PG&E in testing their lines. 

But his main goal will be to make sure that everyone knows that there can never be another San Bruno tragedy. 

“It’s been our emphasis from the beginning that we wanted to do all we can so that nothing happens anywhere else,” he said. 

The Pipeline Safety Trust conference will be webcast live on the organization's site starting at 9 a.m. Central Standard Time on Thursday.


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