Opportunities Missed to Make Residents Aware of Line 132

Communication is usually a two-way street, and, when it comes to pipeline safety, PG&E and the city had the opportunity to be on the same page with letting residents know that a 30-inch high-pressure gas transmission pipeline existed under their neighborhood—in theory.

Unfortunately, numerous opportunities were either missed or allowed to slip through the cracks before the Sept. 9 pipeline explosion with putting that communication into practice, officials learned today on the second day of the .

Chief Dennis Haag said he was among many of the Crestmoor residents who didn’t know about Line 132 before the explosion. Awareness of pipelines became an issue of debate as National Transportation Safety Board investigators, public officials and pipeline industry representatives discussed whom is responsible for making sure people knew the eminent danger of having gas transmission lines existing underground in residential neighborhoods.

Officials seemed to agree that pipeline operators, emergency personnel and others had a shared responsibility of keeping the public aware of where pipelines exist.

In the case of San Bruno, however, PG&E’s effort was lacking.

Aaron Rezendez, PG&E’s senior program manager for safety health and claims, said PG&E had organized several programs that were designed to provide information about the utility’s gas pipelines to emergency personnel. The program includes annual meetings with cities throughout the Peninsula to give overviews of the utility’s natural gas plan. The participation among city officials often varies.

Haag said the first time he learned that Line 132 was underneath the Crestmoor neighborhood was on the night of the fire. He knew about the Peninsula’s two other gas transmission lines, but only because it was mentioned when responding to an incident years ago. Haag also said he had never sought out the information from PG&E, having not known the pipeline even existed.

NTSB investigator Bob Trainor asked Rezendez if he could explain that lapse in communication.

“I can’t,” Rezendez said.

Investigators also harped on PG&E’s use of literature to educate customers living near lines about safety measures. Oftentimes, those inserts are included in utility bills and can be easily overlooked.

PG&E’s evaluation of the effectiveness of their natural gas pipeline literature showed not everyone gets the message about the importance of knowing about the pipelines. In a 2010 survey that went out to customers, Rezendez said, PG&E learned that only 20 out of 1,500 people responded to an evaluation card sent to them about pipeline safety information.

Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, said the root of the problem seems to exist in the language used to put out the message, which is often buried in the mailers behind statements promoting the benefits of natural gas lines.

“Sometimes these mass efforts that the industry puts forward, there’s kind of a conflict of interest because the industry wants to portray themselves as having safe pipelines,” Weimer said. “But if the message is that everything is safe and reliable, it’s hard to get people to get to the safety messages and read those. And that’s what we see in a lot of these mailers.”

NTSB board member Mark Rosekind gave Haag and the other witnesses offering testimony a test to show how easy it was for people to disregard important information when it wasn’t presented properly.

He asked them to point to where they would evacuate the building in the event of an emergency. They all stretched out their fingers, pointing to different exits.

He later said his point was that a message was displayed on the big screens in the room at the beginning of the hearing that spelled out the emergency instructions, and most probably ignored it.

“Really, the objective is knowledge and action, and all the surveys don’t get at any of that,” Rosekind said. “So the challenge is, do you have the knowledge? Next is do you have the action? The third part is what happens when the alarm goes off?”