Gang Task Force's Building Rigged to Explode in Hemet [LA/San Jacinto CA]

NBC ^ | 12/31/2009

[RayChuang88]

I’ve read that if the trapped natural gas inside a house detonates, you have what amounts to a fuel-air explosive (thermobaric) bomb. Small wonder why the explosion you described effectively destroyed three houses.

[FreedomPoster]

I’m pretty certain that is what occurred in that case.

[sonofagun]

Some heads-up thinking saved some lives here.

I came home to a house filled with natural gas about a year ago. You could tell something was amiss within 50 feet of the place.

The gas was so strong you couldn't enter the house without choking on it. (Which I did with the gas company rep to open windows.)

Some heads-up thinking on my part called the gas company before getting anywhere near the place.

[SunkenCiv]

there is no doubt the trap was meant for members of the Hemet/San Jacinto Valley Gang Task Force

[ponygirl]

Hemet is just north of Sholdas

LMAO!! Thanks!

[reaganaut]

My thoughts exactly. I grew up near there and my first thought was “Hemet has a gang task force?!”.

Hemet is still a fairly small community, some farms, little town, it is not what I would call a “barrio”.

[bigheadfred]

Officers arriving for work were saved by their instincts.

I think it is a bit of dyslexia at work . Probably should have been read stinctsin, as in "Gee, it stinctsin here..."

[reaganaut]

Wow. I had no idea that Hemet had that much gang activity. My SIL lives in Cat. City and I have a friend in DHS but I didn’t realize Hemet had those issues.

Of course, when i go through Hemet I usually stay on 74/79.

[AuntB]

“Wow. I had no idea that Hemet had that much gang activity. My SIL lives in Cat. City and I have a friend in DHS but I didn’t realize Hemet had those issues.”

I looked up Hemet, and it seems they are having plenty of gang activity. It’s all over the country. In my old hometown of Medford, Oregon (sanctuary STATE), the gangs constantly let the ‘authorities’ know who is in charge NOW.
There is a latino gang crime every day, with graffiti all over the place. ‘Brown Nation’ is the most active group. Curiously, the homeowner is fined if he doesn’t have it cleaned up within 10 days.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

California becomes Venezuela?

Well, we've certainly imported enough SOB vermin to be so.

[ElkGroveDan]

We have a couple who cleans our house one day a week, and two weeks ago my wife came in two hours they had left I and I came in 40 minutes later. When they had bee cleaning the stove they somehow turned one of the burners on without lighting it. So it was going for at least two hours.

But have propane for the first time (about a year now) and it doesn’t smell like natural gas so my wife couldn’t figure out what it was. She thought it was something that might have burned in the self-cleaning oven. The first thing I asked when I walked in was if she had burned broccoli since that’s what it smelled like. When my nose finally took me to the source I was furious. I can’t imagine what would have happened if they had done this when we were on vacation in October. There’s a pilot light in the fireplace in the family room but fortunately the house is really large and that fireplace is raised a foot and a half higher than the floor.

Someone needs to invent an inexpensive gas detector like a smoke alarm that triggers a shut-off valve.

[reaganaut]

There is a latino gang crime every day, with graffiti all over the place. ‘Brown Nation’ is the most active group. Curiously, the homeowner is fined if he doesn’t have it cleaned up within 10 days.

- - - - -
Oh I know. We just moved from CA this year. We were living in my husband’s grandmother’s house (as caretakers while her estate was being settled) and the neighborhood had become a barrio.

The police wouldn’t even come to the neighborhood unless there was a body in the street.

DH was shot at a couple of times just for driving through the neighborhood and being “anglo”

[ansel12]

How did your ego get so wrapped up in this? How does plumbers doing gas repairs become such an insult to you? Whether someone in the building is authorized to call the plumber directly, or if the phone call is handed to a maintenance man to make, what difference does it make, if an expert is needed, then someone will call a plumber.

[ansel12]

Propane, that is a problem. I never run into propane, but they do make devices like these, if I had to use it, then I would install both.

http://www.propanedetectors.com/

http://midwestgasequipment.com/seismic.htm

[calex59]

What? You mean you have never heard of Hemet, a medium sized town in Southern California set in the middle of the desert?:)

It is one of my pet peeves with posters, this naming the town but not the state as if everyone in the country(world?)knows the location of said town.

[cva66snipe]

Look at the question you asked. I gave you the correct and logical most likely to happen in real life answer. But you seem to know so very little about the way things usually happen and protocols followed. I have also worked maintenance in local government owned buildings before. We handled everything from the school buildings to court house.

City property they will likely call the city maintenance dept which whether you like it or not may or may not be able to do repairs etc and make that necessary determination. Even the one patrolman and a dispatcher small town PD near me do as much.

The maintenance department is most likely called in the case you mention because they usually have the needed information about the building INCLUDING WHERE THE GAS LINES RUN INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF THE BUILDING! {that the contractor will need to know if called and hired} If you are an actual contractor then you would know it, understand it, and I would not be wasting my time explaining it to you which makes me think you know not what you say you do. I think you specialize at installing Al Gore Commodes myself. Seem to remember a discussion on this.

The contractor likely would not respond to the emergency as an emergency responder at least not a general plumber. The fire department and gas utility would be first responders along with maintenance dept because the FD Captain would discuss next steps with them before leaving.

Bye Now.

[Frank_2001]

“You mean you have never heard of Hemet, a medium sized town in Southern California set in the middle of the desert?:)”

When I read the headline, I thought Hemet might be in Afghanistan;)

[cva66snipe]

That happened to two houses about a half mile away in our neighborhood when I was a kid. I think three people died. Two good-sized suburban houses were leveled by the explosion, and a third damaged so badly it had to be leveled, too.

I looked at your location. If on the northern end I think our geology has as much to do with these explosions as anything. Lots of rocks and lots of sink holes and small caverns under a lot of communities.

All it can take is more rain that usual to get the ground underneath disturbed causing rocks to move etc. Too a lot of the lines despite codes and laws specifying depths etc simply do not get buried deep enough originally.

My home is all electric and NG isn't available in my neighborhood nor will it likely be in my lifetime. I'm in the sticks. Gas is cheaper but for my families safety I prefer all electric. Then the biggest explosion danger usually is the hot water heater. Keep it maintained properly and they're reasonably safe. But I've seen what they can do when some moron caps off the pressure relief valve and the thermostat sticks closed. I would never set a thermostat much above 130 degrees. I've read threads in here where some peak them out. Not a good idea and a real bad scalding danger also.

[FreedomPoster]

My neighborhood at the time was a DC suburb, Annandale.

There was some public works digging going on (maybe some storm sewer work, I don’t remember exactly), and they damaged a gas main in the street, and that damage went undetected. The leaking gas seeped into the basements of the two houses that were leveled, was most likely ignited by a furnace pilot light.

[cva66snipe]

That would do it. In the Appalachian region it's fairly easy for a major leak to go undetected. I've heard of them being cut by cable TV companies using a ditch witch. If the operator knows they hit the best thing to do is leave the machine on and run then run faster. I've found gas lines put in some very bad places before just to save digging another trench.