California State Senate Informational Hearing
Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee
Public Safety Committee

The San Bruno Explosion: Pipeline Safety in California
Testimony of Jim Ruane, Mayor
City of San Bruno, California

Tuesday, October 19, 2010
9:30 a.m.
State Capitol Room 4203

Thank you Chair Padilla, Chair Leno and honorable members of the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee and the Senate Public Safety Committee. My name is Jim Ruane, and I am the proud Mayor of the wonderful City of San Bruno, California.

I am here today to give voice to the residents of San Bruno whose lives were shattered on the awful evening of September 9, 2010, but whose spirit remains strong and resilient. We are a determined town that will triumph over this tragedy because of the special sense of family, neighborhood and community that San Bruno was known for long before this tragic incident.

I can tell you with great certainty that the explosion did not tear San Bruno apart but has brought us closer together than ever before.

A place called San Bruno

Let me tell you a little bit about San Bruno. We are a solid working-class community of nearly 44,000 located in the sophisticated urban environment of the San Francisco Peninsula, immediately adjacent to the San Francisco International Airport. We have a unique identity in the region as a somewhat unassuming community with a positive, can-do attitude about life.

We have many beautiful parks in our town, community events almost every weekend. We have decorum at our City Council meetings, pride in the American flag and a legacy of civility in an increasingly uncivil world. I often tell people that San Bruno is the closest thing to a slice of “American pie” that you could ever experience.

The Glenview area where the explosion occurred is a hillside neighborhood of nearly 400 homes built around the Crestmoor Canyon Open Space and the Glenview Tot Lot popular with local families.

The night of September 9, 2010

The explosion occurred at dinnertime on a Thursday evening, just as residents were settling in for another typical night at home and perhaps to watch some sports on TV. The neighborhood was shaken out of its routine with a thunderous disturbance that some mistook at first for an earthquake or an airplane crash. The deafening sound of a fireball roaring 100-feet overhead and 2,000-degree flames overtook the homes. Our residents ran for their lives with just the clothes on their back.

As one resident said, “My wife and children ran screaming barefoot from the house…with a ball of fire behind them.”

What we now know is that a 30-inch Pacific Gas & Electric Co. high-pressure natural gas transmission line lying underneath Glenview Drive for over 50 years exploded. Police and Fire first-responders from all over our region converged on the area, only to discover that the explosion had knocked out the main water line. I immediately drove to the scene and then helplessly watched from afar as the gas line spewed unabated for over an hour until it could be capped.

One observer later said, “It looked like hell on Earth.”

The response

More than 400 first-responders gallantly battled the six-alarm inferno by dragging 3,000 feet of fire lines from an adjoining neighborhood where our water department was able to locate water. As the fire spread rapidly into the adjacent Crestmoor Canyon, air strike teams sprayed fire retardant foam to prevent the fire from engulfing the canyon and the neighborhoods on the other side. Citizen-responders drove their neighbors to nearby hospitals so that emergency crews could focus on the most severely burned and on preventing more lives from being lost.

Within the first hour of the explosion being reported, we had set up an incident command center at the site, evacuated nearly 1,000 homes and activated our emergency operations center at City Hall. Fortunately, we received a flood of assistance not only from our own city workers, but our residents, San Mateo County and state emergency officials, dozens of surrounding police and fire agencies, and relief agencies.

The City moved quickly to help our displaced and frightened residents. We opened an evacuation center for displaced residents that night, had a one-stop local assistance center up and running by the next day and began staffing a special 24-hour hotline and reaching out with one-on-one assistance.

Within 48 hours of the explosion, teams of building inspectors had completed inspection of the evacuated homes in the 10-acre blast zone. That Saturday we convened a Town Hall meeting that drew over 600 residents. By Sunday morning, less than 72 hours from the explosion, we had coordinated a neighborhood re-entry program that allowed 299 families to return home.

Over the next few days those who lost their homes were allowed to return and sift through the rubble for any personal items they could find. We dealt with the deluge of national and international interest by setting up a 24-hour public information line and posting daily updates on the city website.

Some have said our response was a “textbook” example of how to handle a crisis of epic size like this – and I just want to say that it was a team effort involving the tremendous expertise and passion of so many people and agencies coming together to support San Bruno.

The aftermath

The following days were surreal for our community – funerals and vigils, potlucks, fundraising events, press conferences and a nationwide offering of condolences. People from as far away as Kansas and Arkansas, Japan and Australia and others across the world contacted us to lend their support. While our primary efforts have been to get San Bruno back on its feet, our experience has become an international news story about pipeline safety.

The most devastating outcome of the explosion and fire was the loss of eight lives. There were other awful consequences as well:

• 66 persons were reported burned and injured including four firefighters who suffered smoke inhalation. At least 3 residents remain in critical condition today from their burns, and they face long and difficult recoveries.
• Thirty-five homes were destroyed, 20 remain uninhabitable and another 33 suffered less serious damage.
• A large crater and dirt road now cut through Glenview, with a fence surrounding the exposed pipeline. The sad rubble of a children's playground has now been removed, as has the rubble of the dozens of destroyed homes and their barren chimneys that were the grim reminders of the tragedy we experienced.

Rebuilding San Bruno

Today our recovery efforts are on a fast-track, with crews now having cleared the site of debris so that the rebuilding process can begin. The City Council last week waived all building and planning permit fees for the Glenview neighborhood and authorized a streamlined rebuilding process that will allow permits to be issued in an efficient and expedited manner. 

As our residents continue to sort out numerous financial, legal, insurance and other issues, we are coordinating town hall meetings to provide information and resources and we have implemented an outreach program to provide one-on-one assistance to those 55 families who will be out of their homes and their neighborhood for some time to come.

You may be asking yourself what can the state government do to help San Bruno? First and foremost, the state and federal governments should take all necessary actions to ensure that this never happens again. Second, the City of San Bruno, already financially struggling, does not have the resources to cover the costs of the response and the long-term consequences of this disaster. We continue to appreciate the Governor’s appeal of FEMA’s denial of federal disaster relief for San Bruno and your support.

Experts from the National Transportation Safety Board and elsewhere are investigating the incident to determine how and why this happened. These investigations will be vital to ensuring that this type of tragedy never occurs again and that no other community will be subjected to the horror that we continue to experience.

For now we know that this incident cost precious lives, incinerated a neighborhood, caused over $50 million in physical damages and counting, and forever changed San Bruno. We also know that this event has made a determined and resilient town even more determined and more resilient.

As one retired firefighter who lost his home in the blaze said, “I’m going to be the first person to move back in, with the city’s help, of course. The faster I can move forward, the less I think of the past.”

San Bruno will honor those who have lost their lives and lost their way by rebuilding Glenview and by advocating for the need for strict operation, maintenance and inspection requirements and oversight for pipelines in residential areas.

Thank you for your time today, and thank you for your support to San Bruno.