Another Natural Gas Main Ruptures

More than 40 homes and the Saticoy County Club were without heat and hot water after a high-pressure natural gas line snapped under a landslide near Saticoy on Sunday morning.

The 8:55 a.m. rupture, which sent dirt and debris hundreds of feet into the air for nearly an hour, was Ventura County’s third gas-main break caused by a landslide in the past three weeks.

“It is inconvenient for our customers, and it’s costly for us,” said Vic Sterling, Southern California Gas Co.’s central coast district manager.

Sterling said utility officials would gather today to determine what could be done to predict the next area likely to experience a landslide and to prevent future breaks.

“Is there something we can do? Can we predict any future slides?” Sterling asked.

Even though the weather has been dry since last week, Sterling said the slide is “very much related to recent rains.”

The break occurred when a saturated mountainside gave way on the Lloyd-Butler Ranch, which is near the intersection of Vineyard and West Los Angeles avenues.

Unlike the earlier pipeline breaks on Feb. 14 and 17, this break did not result in a tower of flames. No one was injured and there was no damage to nearby structures in any of the three incidents.

The series of pipe ruptures is extremely rare, Sterling said. The utility has 46,000 miles of pipe laid throughout Southern California, and except during earthquakes, breaks such as these don’t happen very often, he said.

Crews regularly patrol pipelines, either by foot or by air. On ground, they use devices that detect gas leaks, he said.

“I’ve been here 10 years and haven’t seen anything like this,” Sterling said. “It is very unusual.”

An eight-member Southern California Gas Co. crew shut off valves on either side of the break within an hour, containing the forceful stream of gas that made a loud whirring noise as it spewed from the ruptured conduit. The natural gas was under 550 pounds per square foot of pressure at the time of the break.

Workers tapped an unaffected line running parallel to the broken pipe and restored gas to most of the surrounding neighborhood by 5 p.m.

“It really didn’t affect us, other than we had to order pizza for dinner because we didn’t want to use the stove,” said Sandy Robertson, a resident on Clubhouse Drive. She said her gas service was restored by about 3 p.m.

Robertson said she smelled the odor of natural gas in the morning but was never worried about the possibility of another rupture or even an explosion.

“It hardly interrupted my daily routine,” she said.

Die-hard golfers at the Saticoy Country Club wouldn’t let something like a potentially dangerous gas leak get in the way of their plans, said Marcus Bright, food and beverage manager at the club.

“You know what golfers are like, especially on a day when it’s sunny,” Bright said. “Some of the older guys even said they got nauseous because of the smell, but they wanted to keep on playing.”

The private club almost canceled its weekly Sunday night dinner for 65 members because of the gas-line shutdown, Bright said.

“But the Gas Co. was great, staying in contact with me all day, so we found out in time that our stoves would be up and the dinner could go ahead,” he said.

Other customers had similar words of praise for the utilities’ crews.

“That’s about the most courteous, nice group of people I’ve seen,” said Clubhouse Drive resident Don Howard, whose son, Dustan, watched the gas eruption from the putting green at the golf course. “They really got on it and took care of us.”

Sterling said inspectors will decide today whether to replace the broken section of 18-inch pipe or reroute it from the area if another slide seems likely.

Until he gets a look at engineering documents, Sterling said he couldn’t determine the age of the pipe or how it would be repaired.