The Bell Law Firm, PLLC

Over the past few years, West Virginia has become intimately familiar with health, safety and environmental issues associated with natural gas production. Hardly a day goes by without a mention of the Marcellus Shale in a local headline. In the year since the fatal accident in San Bruno, Mountain State residents have also become aware that existing pipelines pose as much risk as new and proposed pipelines.

The National Transportation Safety Board recently released the findings of its investigation into the San Bruno explosion, confirming what many have suspected: The conditions that led to the explosion could exist anywhere along the country's 300,000 miles of pipeline.

(Pipelines are considered modes of transportation, similar to tanker trucks or train cars. The NTSB investigates accidents involving transportation of people or materials.)

The San Bruno explosion was an "organizational accident," according to the board. Reading the report, it is clear that San Bruno was to California what the Upper Big Branch was to West Virginia -- a combination of corporate and regulatory problems that converged at that one point in time.

Investigators say the blast was caused by problems dating back to 1956, when the pipe was installed. For example, the pipe had substandard seam welds. Over time, those welds degraded, finally giving way last year.

The San Bruno line also lacked an automatic or remote-controlled shut-off. Such a safety measure would have cut the gas supply off immediately at the time of the explosion. Without the gas to fuel it, the plume of fire caused by the blast would have gone out in about 10 minutes.

The shut-off was manual, though, and it took workers 95 minutes to turn the gas off. The explosion and the ensuing fire killed eight people, injured dozens of others and leveled 55 homes.

We'll continue this in a future post.

Source: Charleston Post & Courier, "NTSB faults PG&E, regulators in gas explosion," Joan Lowy and Matthew Brown, Aug. 31, 2011