Geography Now - San Bruno Gas Explosion



Many calls to 911 were made(Orble,2010,pg1)



On Thursday the 9^th of September 2010 in San Bruno, California, United States of America, a neighbourhood was destroyed by a massive explosion followed by a raging fire. There were many calls to 911 and the reports were that people thought it was plane crash because only a few miles away was the San Francisco International Airport, but it turned out to be a major gas leak (ABCnews, September 10 2010).

                                                                                       

The start of the explosion occurred around the time of 6:15pm, just as the sun was setting. Many residents around the neighbourhood felt harsh shaking from the explosion and some people said the shaking was fiercer than the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. As numerous residents rushed out of their homes, all they could see in the atmosphere were fierce yellow, red and orange flames with dark, black, bellowing clouds rising towards the sky (ABCnews, September 10 2010).

Crater left after explosion(The Christian Science Monitor)

As fire fighters arrived at the scene, one of the fire truck’s windshield cracked and the paint on residents cars was bubbling because of the extremely high temperatures. The temperature also caused many people numerous burns on people’s bodies. In this incident 52 people were injured including four fire fighters and, sadly, four people were killed. More than 100 people were evacuated from their homes and more than 80 homes were damaged by the explosion (ABCnews, September 10 2010)(ABCnews, September 14 2010). On Friday the 10^th, fire fighters were still trying to put out the flames. (ABCnews, September 10 2010).What was left from this sudden disaster was a 15 feet deep, 20 feet long and 30 feet wide creator which was left in the pavement (Theenergycollective,pg1)(The Bay Citizen, pg1).

Officials discovered that earlier in the week, the company PG&E knew about the gas leak but did nothing about it. Residents complained to the PG&E work crew that they could smell gas, but all the work crew told them was “to close their garage doors to avoid smelling the gas odor.”  The gas pipe that caused the explosion was installed in 1948. Residents believe that the pipe should have been replaced a long time ago (The Bay Citizen, pg1).



PG&E pipe which caused explosion( SFgate.com)