Geography

Gulp! Why You Should Be Nervous About a PG&E Gas Pipeline with History of Big Trouble That Runs Through Bernal Heights

/ Todd_Lappin / 21 Comments

Did you happen to catch this anxiety-generating bit of news last week regarding the safety of PG&E’s gas pipelines?  From the San Jose Mercury News:

More than a year after the San Bruno natural gas explosion, PG&E still lacks “a large percentage” of the information it needs to accurately assess its pipeline risks and hasn’t taken needed steps to inform the public about its gas lines, according to the National Transportation Safety Commission’s final report on the 2010 disaster released Monday.

The 153-page report went further than earlier NTSB statements by including a strong warning about PG&E’s limited understanding of what other dangers may lurk underground.

Noting that PG&E uses data in a computerized system to gauge the risk posed by its pipelines, the agency said it fears the system contains “a large percentage of assumed, unknown or erroneous information for the Line 132” — the one that erupted in San Bruno — “and likely its other transmission pipelines as well.”

In addition, the report — the board’s final statement on the San Bruno catastrophe and largely a repetition of previously released documents — scolded PG&E for its continued failure to sufficiently educate the public about its gas lines and the hazards they pose.

In other words, PG&E basically has no idea WTF is going on with its pipelines. Why is that an issue for Bernalwood? Because one of PG&E’s worrisome “other transmission pipelines” runs right through Bernal Heights:

The PG&E pipeline that caused in the San Bruno explosion, Line 132, does not run through Bernal Heights. Instead, Bernal is traversed by another pipeline, called Line 109.

The flow of gas within Line 109 runs south to north. As you can see, the line comes in from Alemany and then heads north via Folsom, with an odd dead-end spur that shoots east along Tompkins Ave. At the top of Bernal Hill it traces Bernal Heights Boulevard, before heading down Alabama to Precita and north via York.

According to a must-read article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Line 109 has a long list of safety concerns and many of the same vulnerabilities as Line 132.

Experts point to the totality of Line 109 problems as warning signs that the older, untested lines in PG&E’s system are fraught with potential risks.

In the case of Bernal Heights, these concerns are not at all theoretical. Line 109 has caused big big BIG problems here before, most notably in 1963, when a segment the intersection of Nevada and Cresent exploded. Part of it looked like this:

And like this:

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A Pacific Gas and Electric Co. gas pipeline running up the Peninsula into San Francisco has a long history of cracked and poorly constructed welds and even exploded once – but it’s not the one that blew up in San Bruno last year.

The pipeline is known as Line 109, and it failed disastrously in 1963 in the Bernal Heights neighborhood in San Francisco. The blast injured nine firefighters and led to the heart-attack death of a battalion chief. […]

Line 109’s problems first came to everyone’s attention almost 50 years ago.

On Jan. 2, 1963, the transmission pipe sprang a leak under Alemany Boulevard in San Francisco. About 1,000 homes were evacuated as firefighters rushed in to help.

Before PG&E crews turned off the line, gas spread to a nearby home, which exploded. Two of the nine injured firefighters were critically hurt, and Battalion Chief Frank Lamey, 63, died of a heart attack.

One of those critically injured was Anthony Marelich Jr. In an interview last week, he said PG&E had left the line active during the evacuation to avoid cutting off thousands of other customers and believed the gas was safely venting into the atmosphere.

Instead, it was filling a house on Nevada Street. Marelich said he had been standing with several firefighters when the home blew up and a wall “landed on top of me.”

“It was instantaneous,” said Marelich, now 73. His face was crushed, and doctors gave him almost no chance to survive.

He was forced to retire the next year, having lost several teeth and his sense of smell. Surgeons had to wire his jaw back on.

“Safety, right now, is in the limelight because of San Bruno,” Marelich said, adding that he thinks PG&E should have paid a steep price for the 1963 blast, “but they never showed any blame for it.”

“What happened to me and what happened to those people down in San Bruno, it should never have happened,” Marelich said.

Put another way, here’s a question we all should ask: In light of the NTSB’s staggering revelations about PG&E’s incompetent management of its gas pipeline network, what are the company and City officials doing to make sure it doesn’t happen in Bernal Heights… again?

IMAGES: Pipeline maps, PG&E; 1963 photos, San Francisco Chronicle

Interactive Map Enables Bernal Heights Time Travel

/ Todd_Lappin / 9 Comments


Get ready to spend the next few minutes immersed in blissfully satisfying distraction. There’s a new website called OldSF that combines interactive maps with geolocated historical photographs to create an easy-to-navigate history tour of San Francisco. Co-creator Dan Vanderkam explains:

Several years ago, I searched for my cross-streets on the Library’s San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection […]. The image was mislabeled — the intersection in the foreground is actually Waller and Fillmore, not Waller and Webster. Which meant that this photo from 1945 was taken from my roof!

I put together a now-and-then shot, but it always bothered me that the mislabeling of the image was so crucial to my finding it. This led to the idea of putting the images on a map.

And now, years later, we have that map!

It’s awesome. It’s geeky. It’s deep. And it’s got Bernal Heights covered. Kiss your productivity goodbye.

Into the Skies with the Bernalwood Air Force

/ Todd_Lappin / 2 Comments

Above California

Tidal Flats

Terrain Below

Above Suburbia

Did you know that Bernal Heights has an air force? We do! Happily, it’s not the militarized sort — at least not yet. (Take note, uppity La Lengua separatists!) There are several pilots who live in the ‘Wood, and they take to the skies when the view from atop Bernal Hill just isn’t high enough.

I went flying with one Bernal aviator last weekend; a gentleman whom I met via this blog. Wing Commander Fiid lives in South Bernal, and after driving down to Palo Alto Airport, we took off in a cozy Cessna 172, bound for the Central Valley town of Willows, about 170 miles north.

Cessna at Palo Alto

Here’s Wing Commander Fiid, confirming our flight path with BERSAC (Bernalwood Strategic Air Command):

Mr. Williams

Alas, we had to bypass Bernal Heights itself, as our lovely neighborhood was covered in a thick and unphotogenic blanket of fog. So instead, our flightpath took us to the east, along I-680, where we looked eye-to-eye with Mt. Diablo:

Mount Diablo

Then we circled a few times over the mothball fleet at Suisun Bay, capturing some great angles on the battleship USS Iowa:

Mothball Fleet

Mothball Fleet

Luckily, other Bernal aeronauts have swooped over the neighborhood on days when the skies were more cooperative. Here are some photos taken by aerial photographer and Bernal resident Jon Hope that capture the scene above our eastern frontier, looking north from Cortland:

Here’s an intimate portrait of the giant bald spot atop the Lowe’s store on Bayshore. “Rogaine on Aisle Six!!”

PHOTOS: Telstar Logistics and John Hope

Ye Shall Walk Bernal Streets, And Know They Are Steepest

/ Todd_Lappin / 25 Comments

This probably does not come as news to the Citizens of Bernalwood, but there are some pretty steep hills in our neighborhood-on-a-hill. And some pretty steep streets that climb those steep hills too. Yet according to the “official stats,” Bernal’s streets are not the steepest:

Now, if you’re willing to believe that official list, then I have a California balanced budget proposal I’d like you to vote on. Here’s the truth: Independent analysts at the excellent Data Pointed blog have concluded that the official steep list is complete and utter B.S.

And not only that, they have also concluded that several of the steepest hills in the city are actually in Bernal Heights.

And not only that, they also, also concluded that the steepest paved street in San Francisco — and quite possibly the entire world! — is a 30-foot section of Bradford Street near Tompkins, just north of the Alemany Farmer’s Market.

Data Pointed explains:

Bradford Street, climbs eagerly from Tompkins Avenue at twenty-percent grade. Then, after 150 feet, the slope doubles, and the concrete poops out. “Anyone wanna take over?!” it yells.

“I does!” hollers the insane asphalt driveway! And lickety split, there’s a perilous, oil-stained jump to the private property above: not “country club” private, mind you, but theother kind, wherein the gap-toothed inhabitants take mighty unkindly to camera-waving interlopers. […]

Carefully, I scaled the beast and measured it: a solid 30 feet of sustained 41% grade! On such a slope, gravity alone pulls a one-ton car downhill with 800 pounds of force, accelerating it from zero to sixty in 7.2 seconds. Whoa Nellie!

Congratulations, Bradford Street above Tompkins, for, having Bravely Thrust into the Forty-Percent-Plus Frontier, you now stand alone atop the Peak Of Maximum Grades as the Most Tilted Paved Urban Thoroughfare In The World!

In a similar vein, Data Pointed has conducted field surveys on hilly streets around the City, and with said data in hand, here’s how their Steepest Hill leaderboard looks right now. (Annotations added):

Amazing, eh? Four of the 10 steepest streets in San Francisco are in Bernal Heights. Fellow Citizens, this could become an economic bonanza for us all. Consider the opportunities:

  • Bernal becomes a glamorous onsite location for filming leg-burning fitness videos or MTV/Jackass-style reality television shows.
  • Ski Bernalwood could extend lift service to Bradford, to open up some new wintersports terrain.
  •  Heartfelt could become a retail colossus simply by selling t-shirts that look like this:

Because let’s face it: Bernal Heights may not always be the smartest, or the prettiest, or the most popular neighborhood in the world. But we may rest secure in the knowledge that we will always be the steepest.

IMAGE: Top, Bradford’s 41% grade. Photo by Data Pointed

Bernal Heights No Longer Google Street View “Black Hole”

/ Todd_Lappin / 11 Comments

No one knows why it happened or why it lasted so long, but BIA signals intelligence analyst Andy Taylor reports that Bernal’s long absence from Google’s Street View maps has finally come to an end:

It’s true! We now exist on the map that matters mostest! Check it:

Let’s take a look at how we look:

And just in time for you, discerning Bernalwood consumer, to choose between Google’s map offering and the competing, “cubist” version from Microsoft’s Bing.

You decide what flavor you prefer, but rest assured, we’re so there.