Hazardous Liquids Flow in 8,000 Miles of Pipes Throughout California

The 14-inch pipeline that ruptured and set off a deadly fire in a San Bernardino neighborhood Thursday is part of 8,000 miles of pipeline that carry oil, gasoline and other hazardous liquids under many residential communities throughout the state.

“We would not look very favorably on constructing pipelines through a residential area, but to get to the refineries, you have to go through those areas,” said Thomas Lael, associate pipeline safety engineer in the state fire marshal’s office. “You are between a rock and a hard place.”

The largest concentration of these lines is under the Los Angeles Basin, and many, possibly most, run near or under residential communities, Lael said. Each month, there are 15 to 20 leaks or pipeline spills statewide, ranging from a few ounces of fuel to 1,000 barrels.

“I don’t want to make it sound routine, but with that many miles of pipeline, this (a spill or leak) is just a normal occurrence” caused by pipe corrosion, he said. “Most of them are real small leaks anyway, a quart or a gallon or a pint.”

Explosions are rare.

“With 99% of the spills, there is no fire or ignition,” Lael said . “This (the San Bernardino blaze) is the exception. You need to have a source of ignition, like a vehicle with an engine running or a cigarette.”

Neal Osborne, a San Bernardino County planning analyst, said the houses that burned in the explosion were built in the early 1970s, a time when the proximity of a pipeline probably would not have been considered and no environmental impact report was required.

“There wouldn’t have been any environmental determination made,” he said.

Each day, that pipeline transports 80,000 barrels of gasoline 250 miles from Colton to Las Vegas. It is owned by Calnev Pipe Line Co., a common carrier that state officials characterize as “cooperative.”

The company “has a good safety record,” said James Wait, acting manager of the pipeline safety program for the state fire marshal.

It was Wait’s office that gave the pipeline a clean bill on May 16, the last inspection after the May 12 train derailment. “Everything looked fine to us and to the operators,” Wait said.

After the train wreck, his office had engineers on the site each day during the cleanup “making sure we did everything we could to avoid a puncture or an accident.”

“We thought that process was finished and we had succeeded. . . .” he said. “It’s just a mystery at this point.”

The fire marshal works with the U.S. Department of Transportation to enforce pipeline safety laws. Usually, the fire marshal inspects a pipeline every year or 18 months to ensure that the carriers meet all federal requirements, including regular patrol of the pipeline to search for leaks and maintenance of valves.

“I don’t recall any particular difficulty with (Calnev) as far as complying with our regulations,” Lael said.

Federal officials say pipeline transportation is considered one of the safest ways to move fuel. “Pipelines are probably, if not the most safe, one of the safest modes of transportation when you look at accident statistics” for trains and trucks, said James Thomas, deputy director of Pipeline Safety for the Department of Transportation.

There are about 200 “significant” spills nationally of more than 50 barrels each year, and last year there were 20 fatalities associated with pipelines, he said. Pipelines are most often damaged by excavation equipment, usually during the installation of sewer lines or construction of highways, according to Thomas. Those accidents are followed in number by mechanical failures and corrosion of pipes.

In California, real estate brokers are required to disclose the existence of a gasoline line to buyers only if it is on the property, not just nearby, said George Hartwell, spokesman for the state Department of Real Estate. Subdivisions have more extensive disclosure requirements, and the presence of a nearby gasoline pipeline would have to be reported.

Residents of the area devastated by Thursday’s blast said they were unaware of the gasoline line that skirted their neighborhood until its existence became known after the train wreck two weeks ago.

Although most pipeline leaks are small, there have been some notable exceptions. In November, 1986, the rupture of a 10-inch pipeline next to the Marine Corps Helicopter Station in Tustin resulted in the spilling of gasoline for two hours into a flood control channel and the temporary evacuation of 1,500 Marines and their families.

Last November, a pipeline leading to an underground natural gas storage yard in Valencia broke and triggered an explosion and a five-acre brush fire. In April, 1988, a street was temporarily closed in Los Alamitos after about 50 gallons of marine diesel fuel from a pipeline bubbled to the surface.

Times staff writers Daryl Kelley and Paul Jacobs contributed to this story.