San Bruno blast probe focuses on shut-off valves (2 hours to close)

[RamboLiberal]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Federal investigators and state legislators are zeroing in on whether inferior shut-off valves on the natural gas pipeline that exploded last week in San Bruno led to a deadlier, costlier disaster.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. managers say it took workers almost two hours to close the manually operated valves on the 30-inch-diameter pipeline that erupted, spewing a wall of fire into a suburban neighborhood. Now, some state officials believe those valves should have been automatically or remotely controlled.

If they had been, utility workers might have been able to stop the stream of natural gas in just a few minutes, they said, and lives and homes might have been saved.

Concerns about PG&E's manual valves date at least three decades to a gas leak in San Francisco that led to federal calls for the utility to improve its system. The subject is sure to receive attention from Sacramento to Washington, D.C., as investigators struggle to find out why the pipeline suddenly blew on Thursday, killing at least four people and incinerating 37 houses. Three people are still listed as missing.





Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/15/MNCK1FE09A.DTL

[RandomThoughts]

1. I didn't notice the use of 37 correlation in earlier articles.

Although people losing homes is not funny.

As a correlation, that is not a new technique, although it is getting more obvious, correlations to posts been happening for years.

:shrug:






Note I am still due beer and travel money, and many good experiences.

[CubicleGuy]

2. I heard on the radio this morning...

... that one of the reasons it took so long to close this one off is that the pipeline was so old and the technology has changed so much since this pipeline was first created, it took a while to find someone who knew how to handle this particular pipeline. As the workforce ages, and the people that have been around for a while retire, there are fewer and fewer people still with the company who actually know about the old stuff.

Watched an interesting video the other day that talked about the fact that there is no one person on the planet who can build a computer mouse from scratch. Many people are involved with the creation of a computer mouse, from the people who drill for the oil and pump the oil which is turned into (by other people) the plastic that goes into the mouse "body", to the electronics people who create the stuff that goes inside the mouse to the programmers who use the electronics to communicate with the computer so that all that moving around and pointing and clicking actually does something useful.

How much essential knowledge is being lost every day due to the people that just die off (as they should, given their age) and take that knowledge with them? I think about the old "Omega Man" movie with Charlton Heston and the updated "last man on Earth" version, and wonder about how that last guy has got no way to take advantage of the remaining infrastructure since he probably doesn't know how any of it works and the people that do are all gone.

[Billy Burnett]

3. Do they make remote shut off valves in China?

That's just about the only way they'll be used.

[RamboLiberal]

4. PG&E had OK to fix pipe near blast; work not done

SAN BRUNO, Calif. — Pacific Gas and Electric Co. got state permission in 2007 to spend $5 million of ratepayer money to replace a 62-year-old section of the pipeline that exploded last week in San Bruno but the work, scheduled for 2009, wasn't done, a utility watchdog said Wednesday.

The utility repeated its request in 2009, asking for $5 million more to do the job by 2013, even though ratepayers had already started paying for the project, according to TURN, The Utility Reform Network, citing documents that PG&E submitted to the California Public Utility Commission.

"There's no excuse for deferring maintenance of potentially compromised pipelines that run under customers' homes, businesses and schools," Mark Toney, executive director of TURN (The Utility Reform Network), said in a statement.

The Los Angeles Times reported on its website that in the 2011 request for capital expenditures, PG&E described the portion of the pipeline, about 1.5 miles north of the segment that exploded, as in “the top 100 highest risk line sections” in a 2007 evaluation.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39197214/ns/us_news-life/