Flame Lights Sky as 2nd Gas Line Snaps

A collapsing hillside snapped a large natural gas line Tuesday--the second such incident in four days--sending a spectacular plume of bright orange flames so high into the predawn sky that it could be seen from Santa Barbara to Oxnard.

The pipeline, a main trunk from Goleta to Ventura, ruptured shortly after 6 a.m. in the rain-soaked hills two miles northwest of town near the Ventura Freeway, igniting a column of flames as tall as a 30-story building.

“The flames were shooting 300 feet into the air,” Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Joe Luna said. “It was like a giant pilot light on top of a hill on a very clear night. We had calls from Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. They wanted to know what the heck we had going on down here in Ventura County.”

The rupture followed an overnight storm that dropped up to 2 inches of rain on Ventura County and increased seasonal rainfall totals to about 300% of normal in coastal areas.

The 16-inch pipe, operated by Southern California Gas Co., is the second main transmission line to break in the hills near Ventura since Saturday afternoon, when an 18-inch line broke after a soggy ridge gave way.

In both cases, automatic safety valves that detect drastic changes in pressure cut off the natural gas flow, starving the fire of fuel. And in both cases, there were no injuries because of the rural locations.

However, the thunderous explosion from the gas fire in the Ventura hills Saturday occurred about the same time as a separate mudslide broke an oil pipeline a few hundred yards away.

The oil line break leaked up to 8,400 gallons of crude into a canyon, then a creek, before the flow was stopped at a Ventura beach without reaching the ocean.

No link has been established between the explosion and oil spill, officials said.

Crews mopped up remnants of the beach-area oil Tuesday, with no obvious harm to birds or wildlife--and without heavy overnight rains washing any oily film onto the beach, officials said.

“Everyone is counting their blessings on this one,” said Lt. Steve Edinger of the state Department of Fish and Game.

The same could be said after Tuesday morning’s predawn explosion in the hills between Emma Wood and Solimar beaches.

The spectacular fire burned out by 6:51 a.m., less than an hour after it started, and the small flare-ups around it were extinguished shortly afterward, Luna said.

Crews from the Gas Co. spent the day shoring up the earth beneath the mudslide to prevent further ruptures, while county investigators checked other hillsides by helicopter for slippery ground that might also give way.

“Right now, everything looks all right and hopefully it will stay that way,” Luna said. “But with all the rain and with the ground being so wet already, it really wouldn’t take too much for the ground to give way.”

County fire investigators believe that Monday’s heavy rains weakened a hillside under the gas pipeline, much as two weeks of rain saturating a hillside four miles to the south led to the pipeline breaks Saturday.

“We’re at 300% of normal rainfall. And it’s only February, so we’re not done,” said Marcia Secord, district manager for the Gas Co.

Forecasters say the next strong storm will arrive Thursday and be followed by at least two more.

Already, the storms of February have taken their toll--causing at least $36 million in damage and rupturing pipelines that Secord said almost never break.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this happening before in Ventura County,” she said, citing the expertise of veteran local engineers.

Throughout Southern California, such gas line breaks are extremely rare, said Gas Co. spokesman Larry Pickett in Los Angeles. “This hasn’t happened since the Northridge earthquake in 1994,” he said.

Although formal investigations will go on for weeks, state investigators attribute all three pipeline breaks to mudslides, not to the lines’ age or maintenance. All three were built in the 1940s.

Secord said the Gas. Co. tested its two ruptured lines in two different ways in the last year--both in accordance with strict state and federal guidelines.

Both lines were patrolled by truck or foot to check for change in pipe color or soil erosion. And in a separate inspection, investigators carried extremely sensitive instruments along the lines to detect any gas that might be leaking, she said.

“This last one was patrolled just a week ago,” she said.

In all, seven gas trunk lines run through Ventura County and cover about 200 miles, she said. Some of those are in cities, but she said they are protected more than those in rural areas because they are buried beneath roads. Sometimes rural lines are not covered.

State regulators who oversee the thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines that snake across the state agreed that such incidents are extremely rare.

Having two natural gas line explosions in a four-day span within miles of each other is mystifying, said Raffy Stepanian, a senior utilities manager in the state Public Utilities Commission’s Los Angeles office.

“We look at this as an act of God,” Stepanian said. “This type of thing doesn’t happen every day, and we are fortunate this happened in an area where people were far away.”

The Gas Co. line that burst Tuesday is known as a Class 1 pipeline. It is the least regulated of four classes of pipelines used by utility companies to transport the highly explosive gas.

To be classified as a Class 1 pipeline, there must be no more than 10 buildings within 220 feet on each side along a mile-long stretch.

Such pipes must be inspected by the utility company at least once every 15 months.

Inspection records are then audited for completeness by the Public Utilities Commission, which does not have enough employees to conduct the checks itself, Stepanian said.

PUC officials opened an investigation into the blast to determine if the utility had complied with all state regulations, he said. State investigators are also gathering information about Saturday’s rupture of Shell Oil’s 10-inch line in the hills three miles from Ventura.

Preliminarily, they have concluded that the line was damaged by a mudslide and did not fail because of poor maintenance, said Robert Gorham, supervising engineer at the oil and gas division of the state Department of Conservation.

State law requires such a pipeline be inspected for safety and corrosion at least once every five years, he said. The 86-mile Shell line was last tested in January 1995, he said.

Gorham said he had not seen the inspection records, but noted that Shell would have repaired any flaw.

“If there were any problems, they would have been repaired,” he said.

The big problem, he said, is too much rain.

“This is like the El Nino warnings have come true,” Gorham said. “Hillsides that haven’t had any slides for many many years are giving way. Pipeline operators are increasing their line patrols, but these happen so quick, they can’t pick it up.”

Kelley is a Times staff writer and Warchol is a correspondent.

* CALIFORNIA STORMS: A3, B7

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Storm Hot Spots

1. A collapsing hillside snapped a natural gas line near Solimar Beach early Tuesday, shooting flames 300 feet into the air.

2. A rain-soaked ridge gave way Saturday, rupturing a pipeline above midtown Ventura that spilled 8,400 gallons of crude oil into the San Jon Barranca.

3. Another landslide nearby split a natural gas line, causing an explosion Saturday that sparked a 100-foot flame and sent tremors rumbling for miles.

4. Ventura work crews have built a diversion to stop oil from spilling into the ocean.

5. A landslide last week created an earthern dam in Hall Canyon north of Ventura, temporarily threatening area homes with flooding.