It's horrifying to imagine what
people in the Crestmoor neighborhood in San Bruno, Calif., went through last night when a gas line ruptured, and an inferno consumed at least 38 homes there.
Perhaps the scariest thing about the explosion is that
it could happen anywhere in America where pipelines are neglected.
Pictures of the devastation
are very moving.
I used to cover the City of San Bruno as a Peninsula reporter, occasionally writing about disaster and how to possibly avoid it. A fire four years ago that killed two people in San Bruno prompted the fire chief to push for smoke alarms in every home:
Fire chief: All homes need alarms
Oakland Tribune
July 26, 2006
Todd R. Brown, STAFF WRITER
SAN BRUNO -- In light of a recent fire that likely killed two people in a Highland Drive home with no fire alarms, San Bruno's fire chief wants to make sure that kind of tragedy doesn't happen again.
Chief Dan Voreyer said Tuesday afternoon that the July 9 blaze believed to have claimed the lives of Richard and Angela Dunbar was the deadliest he's seen in the 25 years he has been with the department.
"Our objective would be to have a working smoke alarm within every residential dwelling," he said. "We want this to never happen again. I can never recall a fire with two fatalities."
Voreyer said he expects the coroner's report on the official cause of death to be finished this week, but noted that it likely will indicate smoke inhalation. "We believe it's accidental," he said of the deaths.
Although he doesn't have a detailed plan yet to ensure that all homes meet the proper guidelines for smoke detection, Voreyer said Tuesday the department is making some changes in the next month to ramp up the number of working fire alarms in the city.
The chief told attendees at Tuesday night's City Council meeting that all San Bruno fire engines and trucks now have smoke detector kits and batteries that will be installed during routine calls for service, including 100 fire alarm kits donated by Lowe's.
The department installed one of the kits Monday at the Senior Center, where the meeting was held. The department also wants civic groups such as the Boy Scouts and parent-teacher associations to get involved in putting detectors in their members' homes. Voreyer said the local American Legion chapter already is on board, and fire officials will explain what to do at the group's next meeting on Aug. 9.
The chief said California's housing code requires working smoke detectors to be installed in any home that is sold, and the building code has a similar requirement when a permit for $1,000 worth of work or more is issued.
But he said a few loopholes need to be closed, such as furnace and water heater work that fall outside the rule, and he'd like to see local laws strengthened to require that alarms are put in when any permit is pulled.
Councilman Ken Ibarra saidTuesday night that the Dunbars' deaths offer a lesson in the importance of installing smoke alarms -- and refreshing their batteries.
"Their loss has caused us to open our eyes a little bit," he said. "It buys you those few minutes more. You can die from smoke inhalation. At least in their memory, we should save some more lives."
Voreyer said carbon monoxide generated by a nighttime fire can kill a home's residents long before the flames reach their bedroom. "It's a tasteless, odorless, colorless gas that can quickly overcome people," he said. "Basically, if they're sleeping, they never wake up."
It costs just $5 to $10 for a smoke detector, Voreyer said. He said the National Fire Protection Association recommends they be placed in each bedroom, in the hallways leading to a home's bedrooms, and on each floor of a home.
"For less than $50, you can provide a three-bedroom, two-bath house with two levels with the appropriate smoke detectors and batteries," he said.
Staff writer Todd R. Brown covers the North County.
* * *
Another story I wrote discussed how the San Andreas fault runs right through the city's hillside, meaning a lot of homes built since the 1906 quake that devastated San Francisco could come down fast thanks to another major shaker:
San Bruno neighborhood teeters on a fault
Oakland Tribune
April 18, 2006
Todd R. Brown, STAFF WRITER
SAN BRUNO -- There is a sinkhole about 4 feet wide and a foot deep on the west side of Oakmont Drive. Every couple of years, it opens up, and every couple of years, the city of San Bruno fills it in and repaves it.
"And they're due, you can see by the orange cone," said Barry Brown, standing in the driveway next to the sinkhole.
He cannot help wondering if the defect is related to the San Andreas fault, which runs north-south behind his son's home on the 2600 block of the street. No one with the city is copping to it, though.
"They're just saying, for some reason it keeps opening up and sinking," he said.
Pointing to the tree line to the west of the back yard, Brown said, "The ridge up to the left is a pretty good indicator of where the fault is."
The neighborhood is just one of many that straddle the 800-mile seam between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates in the earth's crust. The fault cuts through San Mateo County, roughly from Mussel Rock along Skyline Boulevard and Caada Road through Portola Valley.
Its magnitude 7.8 quake on April 18, 1906, was centered offshore near Daly City and spurred thousands of San Franciscans to relocate south. A hundred years later, what was mostly pig farms and other agricultural land along the fault in San Bruno is covered with single- family homes and townhouses.
"I know we're real close," said Jim Trapani, an electrician for PG&E who lives on the 100 block of Riviera Court, just off Oakmont Drive. "I guess there's always a gamble on what fault goes when."
He said he has water and canned goods stocked up for when the next big one hits, and he has a list from Home Depot of what to assemble for an emergency kit. But he admitted he hasn't put it together yet.
"It's just something that we react to more than we prepare for," Trapani said. "It's inevitable that it's going to happen."
Uncertain ground
Things have been quiet on the fault for the past 100 years, but most are aware of the danger of living on the San Andreas.
"This part of the fault is locked. It hasn't budged since 1906," said Carol Prentice, a research geologist for the U.S. Geologic Survey in Menlo Park. "Every year it just accumulates more and more strength, and it will all get released someday."
Prentice said although most of the development around Skyline and Westborough boulevards came after World War II, it predates the Alquist-Priolo Act. That law, which says developers must conduct a geological study before building a subdivision and must set housing back from any active faults, went into effect in 1973.
As a result, there is plenty of housing on top of very uncertain ground.
"Some of those houses sit exactly, squarely, on top of active faults," Prentice said. "It's not just going to be the shaking they're going to have to deal with. They're actually going to have their houses torn apart."
One of Prentice's current projects is a detailed mapping of the development on top of the fault that obscures most markers of the 1906 quake. She said the sinkhole on Oakmont Drive could be an old sag pond, a common feature of the horizontal movement of a "strike- slip quake" such as the one in 1906.
A recent USGS report about the San Andreas fault shows several sag ponds in an aerial photograph from 1946. In a 1993 photo of the same area, most of them are invisible beneath buildings.
Loma Prieta
The 7.1 magnitude quake on Oct. 17, 1989, caused no surface rupture and had mostly vertical movement, unlike the 1906 shaker. It was centered in the Santa Cruz Mountains and had relatively little impact on the Peninsula.
"I know I'd rather be here than where I was in 1989," said Linda Cimmet, who has lived on the 3900 block of Fleetwood Drive with her husband, Jerry, for about 35 years.
She described sitting in a car on Hayes Street in San Francisco, watching windows bulging out of buildings and feeling like someone was pushing her bumper up and down. When she got back to San Bruno, though, the only damage she found was a picture that fell from a shelf in the kitchen.
"It's sort of common knowledge that the San Andreas fault runs through here," she said, gesturing toward her back yard. "I grew up in tornado country, and quite frankly I feel more worried about them than earthquakes."
Cimmet said the neighborhood was brand new when she moved there in the 1960s. She recalled muddy spots across the street before homes were built over them on Fleetwood Court and said the area was covered with "artesian wells" for the pig farms there. Prentice said they could have been sag ponds caused by earthquakes.
Trapani said he was playing basketball when the Loma Prieta quake struck and didn't think much of it. When he got home, though, he found his water heater tipped over and water from his swimming pool splashed about 10 feet from the edge.
"If it was right on top of us, I'm sure it would have done a lot more damage," he said.
Every few centuries
"In 1906, San Bruno wasn't more than just a little whistlestop," said Mitch Postel, president of the San Mateo County History Museum in Redwood City. After the Great Quake, he said, "that's when the real residential development of San Bruno started."
Postel, who lives with his wife in the Portola Highlands area of San Bruno, said his young neighborhood fared well in the '89 quake. "We came back to the house, and it didn't even look like anything moved," he said.
Still, he said they have their water tank strapped to the side of their garage and tools laid out for turning off the home's gas line because he knows full well what could happen to homes along the fault.
The museum unveils a six-month photography exhibit today showing the impact of the 1906 quake in the county. Postel said it wasn't fire but the shaking itself that did the most damage.
"Everybody knows the San Francisco story, but lots of our downtowns were destroyed, particularly San Mateo and Redwood City," he said.
Prentice said she takes college geology students on field trips to the Fleetwood Drive-Westborough Boulevard area to see evidence of the fault. She suspects that a magnitude 7 quake in 1838 was centered on the San Andreas; if so, it would show that small parts of the fault move more quickly in geologic time and generate temblors more frequently than bigger movements, such as the nearly 300-mile-long Great Quake.
"A repeat of the 1906 quake probably happens, on the average, every few hundred years," she said. "It's not like it happens like clockwork. If it happened tomorrow, we would be surprised, but it's not impossible."
Back on Oakmont Drive, Barry Brown recalled how the 1989 quake collapsed chimneys throughout his Santa Cruz neighborhood, and worried about his son's home abutting the San Andreas. "I know what can happen," he said. "I'd rather he didn't live here."
Brown looked at the terraced homes along the street and wondered how much fill separates them from bedrock. He speculated that if a big quake struck now, coupled with the rain-saturated ground on the fault, "There would be a lot of homes on the hillside that would be coming down very fast."
See the San Mateo County History Museum's earthquake exhibit from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday at 750 Middlefield Road, Redwood City. Admission is $4 for adults, $2 for seniors and children. Call (650) 299-0104 or visit
www.sanmateocountyhistory.com.
To learn more about the San Andreas fault, visit the
USGS Web site.
