The National Transportation Safety Board has delivered its findings after a year-long probe into the Sept. 9, 2010 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes, and found that the accident was “clearly preventable,” according to a news report.
In a prepared statement, NTSB chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman said: “Our investigation revealed that for years, PG&E exploited weaknesses in a lax system of oversight. We also identified regulators that placed a blind trust in the companies that they were charged with overseeing to the detriment of public safety.”
The NTSB faulted PG&E for the 1956 installation of a “woefully inadequate pipe” and said the company compounded this error though “a litany of failures — including poor recordkeeping, inadequate inspection programs, and an integrity management program without integrity.”
The NTSB report also faulted two regulatory agency decisions – made by the California Public Utilities Commission in 1961 and the U.S. Dept. of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in 1970 – to exempt older pipelines from the testing that is required of newer pipelines.
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