San Bernardino Will Sue Pipeline Company, Angered Officials Say

City officials, ruefully telling of reassurances by state and pipeline company inspectors that the pipeline involved in Thursday’s fatal gasoline explosion was safe, announced plans to sue the pipeline company for damage sustained in the disaster.

“We were told the pipeline had been looked at after the (May 12) train derailment, inspected, and it was safe,” Mayor Evlyn Wilcox said. “Apparently, though, there was some weakness.”

The mayor said she was “upset, concerned and distraught” at the loss of life and property in the explosion, and City Atty. James Penman said the city will sue the Calnev Pipeline Co.

“Obviously, in this case, the experts were wrong,” Penman said. “Calnev has got a lot of explaining to do.”

While the mayor and city attorney were making their bitter statements at the scene of the explosion, however, other officials at City Hall were refusing to make records available that could shed light on what role the city and other agencies played in allowing the railroad track and pipeline right-of-way so close to a housing tract.

“We have some potential litigation here, so we can only say at this point that from our point of view everything was handled according to state laws on tract subdivisions, railroad lines and pipelines,” city spokesman Gregory Garcia said. “What we did was correct, but we cannot divulge the records at this time.”

Other officials in the city’s Planning Department, however, said the tract was approved before the railroad line was constructed, and that the homes in the 230-lot subdivision were constructed after the rail line was built but several years before the pipeline went in.

John Montgomery, principal planner for the city, released a brief file noting that the subdivision was approved by San Bernardino County authorities on March 17, 1955. It was not until Oct. 1, 1957, that the area was annexed to the city of San Bernardino.

Montgomery said the railroad had been constructed in 1966 and the homes in 1970. A Calnev official said the pipeline was constructed in the mid-1970s.

A deputy city administrator, Jim Richardson, said that just last week the city attorney, Penman, had negotiated an agreement with Southern Pacific under which the railroad company rather than the city was to assume liability for damage resulting from the train derailment.

The records that were requested and withheld Thursday pertained to any city hearings or other deliberations that may have transpired over permits for the pipeline. The general manager of the pipeline company’s local office, Jed Robinson, said that while the U.S. Department of Transportation had the overall responsibility for approving the pipeline and the office of the state fire marshal for inspecting it, he believed that local permits had also been required to actually construct it.

Although city officials aimed their criticism at the pipeline company, it is the state fire marshal’s office that was responsible for assuring that the pipeline was safe after the May 12 train derailment.

It was this agency’s West Covina office that conducted spot inspections in the days after the train derailment and found no impairment of the pipeline.

Questions Raised

Thursday afternoon, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency, said the board will investigate what had happened with particular attention to the following questions:

- Why didn’t testing of the pipeline after the derailment reveal any damage?

- What kind of testing was done by the fire marshal’s office?

- What may have happened to the pipeline after the testing?

- How did a pipeline cutoff valve that is supposed to detect changes in pressure and shut down a leaking line function in this case?

Officials on various levels said that while the Transportation Department has overall authority over the pipeline, a confusing array of state and local agencies also had roles in the permit and design process for it.

Tom Lael, an associate safety engineer in the fire marshal’s office in Sacramento, said the state agency had entered into an agreement in 1985 with the U.S. Department of Transportation to assume responsibility for inspecting the Calnev pipeline.

Responsible Department

But Lael said that while the fire marshal makes reports on what it finds, it is the Transportation Department that is responsible for any follow-through.

He said many different state and local agencies have a role in the process whereby pipeline companies are given permits to build their lines. There are so many agencies that, in most cases, the agencies agree among themselves which one is to have the coordinating role in the permit process, he said.

The fire marshal’s office comes in after the permits to look at design factors, he said.