Group Fights Service Cuts at SoCal Gas : Consumerism: Coalition sees public safety risk in end of between-tenant inspections. Company blames fuss on union negotiating tactics.

Southern California Gas Co. is facing mounting criticism from a coalition of consumer organizations, politicians and union officials over changes that critics contend will reduce customer services and could pose public safety risks.

SoCal Gas says the changes in current and proposed customer services will not pose a safety threat. The company says the criticism is a contract negotiations ploy by Local 132 of the Utility Workers Union of America, which represents 5,000 of the utility company’s 9,000 employees.

The union is part of the coalition that is also opposed to SoCal Gas’ proposed increase in service connection fees--to $35 from $5--replacing human meter readers with automated devices and other proposed changes at public hearings of the state Public Utilities Commission this week in Delano, Bakersfield, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara.

SoCal Gas has proposed the restructuring of services to cut costs and take advantage of new technologies.

The utility’s most controversial change would sharply reduce the conventional practice of shutting off gas service when a residential or business customer vacates a building. Under that procedure, when a new occupant orders service, a utility worker returns to switch the gas back on and inspect all gas appliances in the building.

But “soft closings” leave the gas hooked up, with the gas company shutting the meter off only if it shows unexpected use. Soft closings, which made up 70% of all SoCal Gas’ meter shut-offs in 1992, came under greater scrutiny Monday when critics charged that the practice may have contributed to the death of a baby boy in Crestline.

A faulty heater in a family’s rental unit would have been detected by the gas company’s routine inspection, according to the coalition Save Our Services. The 13-month-old boy was found dead in a closed room Nov. 12, 1992, that had been heated to more than 120 degrees by a heater with a thermostat that remained on high no matter the setting, according to the Crest Forest Fire Department.

“I believe that that child would be alive today had that (no-inspection) policy not been in effect at that house,” said SOS campaign Chairwoman Sarah Bradshaw. “One of the service people would have detected the obviously faulty equipment and closed that valve, had they done the inspection that traditionally accompanied a gas turn-on.”

SOS members include the mayors of Santa Monica and Corona, Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles), chairwoman of the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce, as well as a dozen other state politicians, labor unions and private groups ranging from Consumer Action to the Grey Panthers of Greater Los Angeles.

But Marianne Selindh, manager of customer services for SoCal Gas, said the utility’s own investigation showed that the heater was tampered with after the tenants moved in.

“Our folks were told by the tenant that the tenant had worked on the heating unit,” Selindh said, and therefore even a conventional inspection and gas turn-on would not have uncovered the problem.

Detective Rick Cole of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that “there had been some tampering with the heater unit, but by whom or for what I don’t know.”

SOS also charges that a February, 1992, fire started by children in an apartment in Hemet would not have occurred if the gas had been shut off. The children broke into the apartment, piled leaves and other debris on the kitchen stove and turned on the gas.

“A policy to leave vacant houses with the gas (service) intact, I’ve got a problem with that,” said B.J. Phillips, fire marshal and building official for the city of Hemet. “Everybody in Southern California has a problem with vagrants and the homeless.”

Selindh said that despite such incidents of vandalism, soft closings have been used safely by SoCal Gas and other utilities since 1978. The utility leaves brochures on the doorsteps of new customers offering free appliance inspections, Selindh said.