The google map below shows the spot where the pipeline exploded.  It also shows the asphalt patches placed on the street surface by a San Francisco firm (D’Arcy and Harty) after it completed sewer work in May 2008.

Before a contractor digs in the street, PG&E is supposed to mark on the street with spray paint the location of its gas lines so that the contractor can avoid them. Interestingly, those paint marks aren’t visible. Maybe they were worn away, or perhaps the contractor just paved over them after it finished the work.  Maybe the photo just isn’t of high enough resolution.  But certainly the situation brings back memories of the last underground gas explosion in the bay area —  the one on Spencer Avenue in Santa Rosa.

In the Santa Rosa explosion, PG&E failed to properly mark the location of its gas line. A contractor hit the line with a backhoe and damaged it. The line leaked months later. Residents smelled gas in the days leading to the blast, but nothing was done to find or repair the leak.  

One thing might be different here.  The contractor may have damaged the gas line not with a backhoe, as in Santa Rosa, but with the vibration resulting from its unique method of sewer line replacement.  According to the San Jose Mercury News: 

To avoid the disruption of digging trenches in the street, the contractor used a method called "pipe bursting." Crews pulled a large, cone-shaped device through the aging, 6-inch sewer pipes, shattering them, and replaced them by pulling a new, 10-inch, polyethylene sewer pipe in behind them. The technique can cause ground shaking and disruption of adjacent soil and rock.

Local residents report that there was certainly lots of shaking and pounding in connection with the D’Arcy and Harty project.

Of course, to a large extent, how the damage to the gas line was done isn’t nearly as relevant as why PG&E didn’t find and fix it.

San Bruno Excavation

Insurance companies are businesses.  Their goal is to increase profits.  Sometimes they view settling an insurance claim with the victim of a disaster as a business negotiation.  Following a disaster, homeowners may face the following problems:

  • Not having enough insurance to cover their losses (also known as “underinsurance”.)
  • Delays in getting responses to phone calls, letters or other inquiries.
  • Confusion over what’s covered and what’s not
  • “Lowball” estimates and settlement offers
  • "Hardball" negotiating tactics by insurance company employees

Not every victim encounters all of these problems.   Many claims go relatively smoothly and the process works as it is supposed to. But every large loss insurance claim is time-consuming.  In California the insurers must comply with “Fair Claim Handling Regulations”, and other laws that tell insurers what they must, can, and cannot do. These laws are in an “Insurance Code” (a fancy name for the book of laws governing insurance). There are also laws in published decisions by Judges. Judicial decisions create laws, in addition to the “code” laws and regulations. Insurance companies are supposed to comply with all three: regulations, statutory law, and case law.

The California’s Fair Claim Handling Regulations are very useful and provide specific rules relating to–

  • Deadlines for responding to letters and phone calls 
  • Deadlines for proofs of loss
  • What information your insurance company must give you

You can read and print out these regulations and laws here at the California Department of Insurance website.

Remember:  your insurance adjuster may be friendly — but he is not your friend.  He is a businessman.  If you feel you need to level the playing field, you should contact a lawyer.  Many victims are concerned that if they consult a lawyer the insurance company won’t talk to them.  Your insurance company has a legal duty to process your claim.  That duty persists even if you have a lawyer helping you and even after you sue them.  Sure, the adjuster may be reluctant to speak with you if you’ve retained a lawyer. But if you want to maintain communication with your insurer and your lawyer agrees, she can notify your insurer that they’re permitted to continue talking with you directly.

Questions and answers about the NTSB’s role in investigating the PG&E gas explosion and fire in San Bruno:

Why is the National Transportation Safety Board investigating?

Pipelines are considered modes of transportation because a product (natural gas) travels through them.  Therefore, the NTSB investigates pipeline accidents that involve a fatality. 

Will the NTSB hold the wrongdoer accountable?

No.  The NTSB has no power to punish or fine anyone, or to hold anyone accountable.  In fact, the NTSB has no enforcement power at all.  Furthermore, its conclusion about who was at fault for the explosion will be inadmissible in any subsequent lawsuit or other legal proceeding. 

If the NTSB has no power to hold wrongdoers accountable, and its conclusions are inadmissible, then what’s the point?

The only reason the NTSB exists is to study accidents and make safety recommendations like this one.  The hope is that industry will adopt the recommendation and that future accidents will thereby be avoided.  But the NTSB cannot require anyone to implement the recommendations.  It can only make the suggestion.

How reliable are the NTSB’s conclusions about the cause of an accident?

Unfortunately, they are not reliable at all. Generally, the full facts about the cause of an accident come out only during the litigation process.

I write here about the problems with the NTSB’s findings in the context of the NTSB’s specialty, aviation accidents. The NTSB’s findings are not any better in the pipeline context.   For example, here is the NTSB’s report concerning the fatal PG&E gas explosion in Santa Rosa. The NTSB cleared PG&E, blaming a contractor for striking and damaging an underground gas line that later leaked and caused an explosion and fire.  Five years later a jury came to a different conclusion.  It held PG&E liable for the deaths for failing to properly mark on the street the location of the gas line so that the contractor could avoid striking it in the first place.

Hearing about the San Bruno explosion brought back memories of another PG&E explosion that killed two, injured three others, and destroyed an apartment building in Santa Rosa.  In fact, the Wall Street Journal even mentioned that explosion in its article discussing the San Bruno blaze.

I spent 4 years prosecuting the case against PG&E on behalf of the families of those killed. Some of the lessons I learned from that case seem applicable here:

  • Gas leaking from the street will follow the path of least resistance. The path is typically through the airspace that exists around the pipes that lead into or under the nearby houses.
  • Natural gas has no odor. PG&E adds to the gas an odorant (called mercaptan) before distributing it. The sole purpose of the odorant is to help in detection of leaks.
  • The odorant is stripped from the gas when the gas passes through or along dirt. That means the odorant is effective of alerting people of a leak from an appliance such as a stove, but is much less effective at alerting people of a leak from the street.

If even one person reports to PG&E the smell of gas, or rotten eggs, or a smell like rotten food — however faint — PG&E must chase it down.  If the smell cannot be traced to an appliance, it’s potentially big trouble. A faint smell of gas can mean either a very small leak from an appliance or a huge leak that has passed through soil, been stripped of its odorant, and is permeating the neighborhood homes. 

In any case, locating and controlling leaks is PG&E’s responsibility.

The California Bar’s Chief Lawyer is warning victims of the San Bruno explosion about unethical lawyers, and about the best way to select an attorney.  The full text of the warning letter is set forth below.  The highlights:

  • It is unethical and illegal for an attorney, or someone acting on the attorney’s behalf, to contact a victim in person or by phone for the purpose of offering services unless the victim has asked to be contacted. Victims should not deal with attorneys who contact them in this fashion. (Contact by letter, as long as the letter says “advertisement,” is allowed.)
  • A victim should consult with several attorneys before selecting one to represent him or her.  The victim should not feel rushed to complete the selection process.  There is time.
  • A victim should ask the attorney he is speaking to about the the attorney’s “experience and background to handle the particular matter.”

The last point is probably the most important.  Some useful questions to ask the attorney:

The least useful question to ask is for an attorney’s opinion of the value of the case.  Unethical attorneys will often offer an inflated opinion in an attempt to win the client over.

I represented all the victims of the PG&E gas explosion in Santa Rosa except for one, who selected a different attorney.  That attorney, though a charming person, simply didn’t have the experience necessary to handle the case, and ended up settling the young woman’s case for much less than was appropriate.  The young woman later asked my firm to sue her former attorney for settling the case for less than was fair.  We proved that the lawyer, in convincing the woman to settle for the amount she did, committed malpractice.  But the attorney’s own insurance was not sufficient to fully compensate the woman for the harm he caused her.  Needless to say, it would have been better had the young woman selected the right attorney at the outset.

San Bruno Explosion

Underground gas lines can leak because of corrosion, because they were improperly installed, or because they were damaged by a contractor’s backhoe during a street repair project.

A leak may be PG&E’s fault.  Or it may not be.

But it’s always PG&E’s job to find leaks in its equipment.  It is supposed to do this in at least three ways:

  1. By checking to be sure more gas is not being pumped through the system than going through the meters serving the houses;
  2. By performing “leak surveys,” which entails driving through neighborhoods looking for dead vegetation — one sign of a gas leak
  3. By taking reports of "funny gas smells" from customers seriously.  Unfortunately, sometimes PG&E doesn’t.  If a serviceman can’t find a leak coming from an appliance, he may chalk the smell up to poor housekeeping.  Sadly, some PG&E engineers feel that not all gas leaks are dangerous enough to be treated as real emergencies.

I’ve listened to PG&E engineers on the "gas side of the house" try to convince me that natural gas leaks are not really that dangerous. They have argued that you need more than just a leak to end up with a fire or explosion. 

First, they say, you need the proper mixture of gas and air. That mixture is 5 to 15% gas, and the rest air. If the gas content is less than that, the mixture is too lean to ignite. If it is more than that, it is too rich. To ignite, the mixture must be just right. 

Second, before a combustible mixture can explode it must come in contact with an ignition source. Say, for example, an open flame. 

Everything has to coincide just right, they say, for an explosion to occur.  So leaks shouldn’t always be considered that dangerous.  Leaks are not always an emergency.

Some of what they say is true. But only to a point.

Yes, only a combustible mixture of natural gas and air can ignite. At the source of the leak, the "mixture" is almost 100% gas. That’s too rich to combust. Far from the leak, the mixture is almost pure air. That’s too lean. However, there is always an area between the source of the leak and the air far from the leak where the mixture will be just right.  And that combustible mixture will move as the leak continues and the gas cloud grows.

Sooner or later, the combustible mixture will encounter an ignition source. An open flame is not required. A car cranking over its engine, someone flipping on a light switch, or someone answering a cell phone is enough to trigger an explosion.

A friend heard that PG&E was accepting responsibility for the San Bruno gas explosion. Wrong. They aren’t.  PG&E’s statement is cleverly worded to avoid accepting responsibility until the case against it is proven.  Read it carefully:

If it is ultimately determined that we were responsible for the cause of the incident, we will take accountability.

Once it is ultimately proven that PG&E is responsible, how could it not? 

 

Red Cross Shelters:

  • Veterans Memorial Recreation Center, 251 City Park Way at Crystal Springs Road, San Bruno
  • San Bruno Senior Center, 1555 Crystal Springs Road, San Bruno
  • Red Cross Receiving Center: Church of the Highlands, 1900 Monterey Drive, San Bruno

San Bruno Emergency Hotline: (650) 616-7180

Legal:

If you have been affected by the fire and would like to know your legal rights, call or email us or contact the San Francisco Mass Tort and Class Action Law Firm Girard Gibbs at 415.981.4800.

Friday night lights. Marching bands. And the smacking of football pads. Yes, it’s football season!

As parents prepare to watch their kids on the football field, discussion returns to topics of injuries and helmet safety. The risk of football-related brain injurieses is undeniable. Each year designers and manufacturers unveil the latest and greatest helmet.  The new helmets can cost between $300 and $400. Does a more expensive high tech helmet make a difference?

Opinions vary.

Some medical experts say there are no conclusive studies that show one brand or style of helmet to be more effective at preventing concussions than another. "We just know that helmets in general don’t protect against concussions," said Dr. Robert Cantu, who has been studying football-related head injuries since 1987. "We do know a newer helmet is better than an older one," he added.
While manufacturers such as Riddell claims that its Revolution helmet reduces the risk of concussion by 31 percent, and Xenith does not call its product a helmet, rather it boasts of an “adaptive head protection system of integrated technologies designed to reduce the sudden movement of the head by adapting to different energy levels."