I’ve worked for Southern California Gas company over 36 years. PG&E has always played fast and loose with pipeline safety. It’s an industry-wide open secret. They are so far behind on maintenance on an ancient system that there’s no catching up!
It’s kind of terrifying, living in a PG&E service area.
I was in a village in the Chicago area about twenty years ago when flooding from a heavy rain apparently undermined a large gas main downtown. Fortunately no fire, but the gas could be smelled all over town.
When I was looking for a house to buy in the same geographic area in 1998, I noticed one fairly nice house on the market had an odd gas odor near the garage. I asked the area gas company, Northern Illinois Gas, about it. They came with a sniffer and found a leak at the area, and even said it was due to old copper line corroding from the inside from sulfur containing gas, but didn’t seem to want to do anything more. Well when I learned the gas line belonged to the gas company and couldn’t be replaced by a property owner, I got incensed and called Northern Illinois Gas again. I said they knew their gas lines were corroding like this and they just let them sit. I said this would keep me from buying the house, especially if I could do nothing about it, and let the selling real estate agent know too. Well, Northern Illinois Gas got busy and dug up the yard and replaced the pipe, but by then other more suitable houses were on my short list.
Remember several years ago when a driver on Coffee Road was cremated by a blast from the Coffee Road station?