The first thing they noticed was the shaking.
The ground erupting underneath the sleepy suburb of San Bruno on Sept. 9, 2010, felt like an earthquake -- a big one, maybe even the big one.
As debris fell from ceilings across the Crestmoor neighborhood, frightening children who cowered under desks while stoic parents braced themselves against doorways, it still seemed like something comprehensible. Earthquakes can be big and destructive, but in this normally tranquil corner of Northern California, most people are relatively familiar with and prepared for the common West Coast natural disaster.
Only when residents dusted themselves off and looked out the window did they see their world engulfed in flames.
Bill and Nellie Bishop soon realized that, whatever was happening, they needed to escape as fast as possible. Then, as if on cue, a three-foot boulder smashed though their roof, rolled down the hallway and came to rest in the bathtub.
No, this wasn't an earthquake. This was something very different.
"As soon as I stepped from the garage into the driveway, the heat was like being in Vegas," Gary Gretter recalled. "You’re in a 70-degree casino and you step out and it’s like 120 degrees. There was an immediate difference in temperature."
Maria Barr was trapped under a hedge in her yard. After seeing the fire, the 70-year-old had instinctively run outside to check on her next-door neighbor, a paraplegic who lived alone. The thick black smoke forced Barr to collapse into a small ball on the ground before she could do anything more than holler, "Are you all right?" over the fence.
Barr thought she was a goner until by chance Sean Applegate, a neighbor's boyfriend, darted into the yard searching for two missing dogs. Applegate glimpsed Barr and paused. "It took me a second to realize it was a real person," he said. He scooped her up, helped her into his car and drove them both to safety.
The sound of the car's engine, powering Applegate and Barr out of the living fireball consuming their community, was obscured by a much louder noise—the roaring of a Pacific Gas & Electric gas line exploding, the solid embodiment of one of the largest and most powerful companies in the country coming apart at the seams.
When the dust settled, eight people were dead and 38 homes lay in ruins.
(Story continues below.)
San Bruno Explosion
'A SYSTEMIC PROBLEM'
According to a scathing National Transportation Safety Board report, a poorly welded section of a PG&E natural gas pipeline had gradually expanded beneath the neighborhood for years. Eventually, a pressure spike caused the line to rupture near the intersection of Glenview Drive and Earl Avenue.
The now-defunct company Consolidated Western created that segment of the pipeline back in 1956 by welding together discarded bits of other pipes, the report revealed. The line had not been inspected since its installation, even after PG&E detected a leak in the same general area during the 1980s.
The report pinned blame for the pipeline’s failure on both PG&E officials and the regulators tasked with keeping the public safe. The politically powerful San Francisco-based corporation had been granted exemptions from the requirement to regularly pressure-test its lines by the California Public Utilities Commission and the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The explosion was the result of "a company that exploited weaknesses in a lax system of oversight and government agencies that placed blind trust in operators to the detriment of public safety," said NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman.
"PG&E’s multiple, recurring deficiencies are evidence of a systemic problem,” the report concluded, noting the Crestmoor disaster's similarity to a 2008 explosion in Rancho Cordova, Calif.
Take a look at the Crestmoor houses impacted by the blast (story continues below):
ROCKY RELATIONSHIP
Crestmoor residents have had a conflicted relationship with PG&E in the year since the explosion.
The company has gone to great lengths to appear penitent over the damage it wrought. It took out an open letter in major Northern California newspapers apologizing for the disaster and promising to do better in the future. "We are sorry for the San Bruno accident and we are working to make our operations safer and stronger," it read.
PG&E established the Rebuild San Bruno Fund, which budgeted up to $100 million for the victims of the explosion and instituted a program in which the company would buy distressed Crestmoor properties from homeowners looking to sell and move on with their lives.
CEO Peter Darbee stepped down from his post in April, noting that it had been "a challenging year." Darbee's resignation paved the way for PG&E to appoint Anthony Earley -- the first chief to be hired from outside the company's ranks in its century-long history.
Despite such actions, there's a feeling that PG&E is also doing whatever it can to skirt full responsibility. More than 300 claims against the company are winding their way though the courts. When a July filing implied that a sewer construction project was a factor in the explosion, many took it to mean that the utility at least partially blamed San Bruno residents for what happened.
"We want it to be crystal clear that no one at PG&E would suggest that the plaintiffs or residents of San Bruno impacted by this accident are somehow at fault for the tragedy," PG&E responded in a statement.
Crestmoor resident Bill Magoolahan, whose home was destroyed in the fire, rated the company a "five out of 10 on the trustworthy scale."
San Mateo Assemblyman Jerry Hill accused PG&E of trying to have it both ways. "PG&E officials need to stop talking out of both sides of their mouths and treat the victims of this tragedy with the respect they deserve,” he said.
Hill recently proposed pipeline safety legislation to reduce the hazards associated with such equipment. His bill would require pipelines in highly populated areas to contain automatic shutoff valves, prevent gas companies from recovering any fines or penalties from ratepayers, mandate that regulators track PG&E's spending on safety projects and force the utility to annually review its emergency response plans with local fire departments.
In March, facing a mandate to prove that the rest of its pipelines are safe, hundreds of PG&E employees combed through 100,000 crates of documents relating to the history of the pipelines. Despite the undertaking, key documents detailing the history of the line that ran under Crestmoor have never been recovered.
REBUILDING AND RECOVERING
A handful of survivors meet for coffee at the San Bruno Resource & Recovery Center each week. They chat about still trying to get the acrid smoke smell out of their linens, trade advice about the best ways to schedule the planning commission meetings required to start rebuilding their homes and pine for the photo albums they wish they had saved. "That’s the one that’s tough," said one woman. "It’s hard to get the pictures back."
Some Crestmoor residents started rebuilding their homes almost immediately, while others have taken longer to muster the energy to start afresh.
Barr's house was "yellow-tagged," meaning it wasn't damaged enough to warrant immediate demolition but wasn't in good enough shape to be habitable without significant improvements. Barr, whose husband passed away in 2006, spent much of the last year living in her daughter’s condominium. Bouts of depression crippled her. “Every day, I'd think I was getting better,” she said. "But the fact that I hadn’t accomplished much -- I don’t know, it was like a sadness that would come back."
She's making progress, slowly but surely, although boxes still clutter virtually every corner of what was once Barr's home.
Conversely, the Bishops started rebuilding almost immediately. The couple spent the week after the explosion living with their daughter and then moved right back into their house to start making things right.
They spent $140,000 in insurance money on four months of nonstop reconstruction, restoring their home to its original shape. "I was just thinking, 'Let’s get on it right away before they forget about us,'" said Bill.
"We wanted to make sure that we were here for everything,” added Nellie, noting that they insisted on living in the house during the reconstruction. "To me, it was part of the healing process."
This article was made possible by the tireless reporting of Martin Ricard and San Bruno Patch.