Politics & Government

Call Logs from Milpitas PG&E Terminal Before San Bruno Explosion

Here's a round-up of what media outlets, including Patch, found—based on a revealing document released by the federal agency conducting the pipeline investigation.

In observance of , a national initiative to promote government transparency, Milpitas Patch highlights the disclosure of public documents—call logs from the to a gas control center.

The series of events that unfolded at the Milpitas PG&E gas terminal moments before the San Bruno pipeline explosion are available in a transcript released Feb. 28 by the federal agency handling the investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board. The 441-page document is just thousands of pages released by NTSB for a three-day public hearing, March 1-3, in Washington, D.C.

You can read the transcript here and compare it with a timeline of events. Or take a look at what news outlets reported in their research.

Find out what's happening in Milpitaswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Associated Press (Garance Burke): 

PG&E workers at the Milpitas terminal knew something had gone wrong with the repair job at least half an hour before the explosion.

Find out what's happening in Milpitaswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"Something opened that shouldn't have," one unnamed gas control operator told a colleague 20 minutes before the explosion. "They're scrambling in Milpitas right now trying to figure out what the hell opened and what's going on." (Page 105)

San Francisco Chronicle (Eric Nalder):

The repair set off a chain of events after electricity was cut off to equipment that controls gas pressure in the Peninsula pipelines. Two backup power supplies failed to work and communications between PG&E's gas control center in San Francisco and the Milpitas control station were lost.

When power was cut to the control station in Milpitas, a system set up by PG&E automatically increased pressure on all three Peninsula pipelines, including the one coursing through San Bruno, according to PG&E employees interviewed by the safety board. 

"We're screwed, we're screwed," said one operator. (Page 92)

Milpitas Patch:

At 6:26 p.m. an unnamed gas control operator said, "We've got the pressures under control and right now it's just a matter of the people at Milpitas getting everything back for us." (Page 143)

At 6:27 p.m. the gas control operator who answers as Valenti gets an urgent call from Sean at the Concord dispatch.

"Quick question," said Sean. "You guys lose any pressure or anything out in San Bruno? I'm getting a couple of calls right now that they're saying there's a flame I guess that's shot up in the air about 3 or 4, 3 stories I guess, and it sounds like a jet engine. (Page 146).

Shortly after ... "Line break in San Bruno. Line break in San Bruno. Check it out," an unidentified speaker said. (Page 148).

A gas control operator named Larry explained the situation to Phil Fazio and said, "That genius block change at Milpitas screwed up, okay. We ended up overpressuring the whole Peninsula. Okay. They still don't have that fixed. There's also been a major explosion up in San Bruno, and we've dropped pressure substantially in one of our transmission lines up there." (Page 171)

An unnamed gas control operator said to Andrew, "So here's the bad part is right before the change of shift, we had Oscar (Martinez) and Dave Boyd at Milpitas working and something that happened while they were working was all the data at Milpitas went out of range, and we overpressured the mixer and we got up to 394 pounds (per square inch, or psi) on the outgoing lines." (Page 178)

The operator said to Andrew, "I do not know if the Milpitas  incident is related to the Martin—to the Skyline and Sneath (San Bruno) incident. I do not know that. At this point, their (sic) coincidental. (Page 179)


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