DHS Connections to San Bruno Explosion
HUB correspondent
John O’Neill watched the blazing flames carefully from his window to make sure it did not reach his house. On the same hill, photographers were lined up, airplanes tried to extinguish the fires from above, and news helicopters zoomed across the sky.
“It’s like disaster city around here,” O’Neill said.
Just two days before Sept. 11, a broken natural gas pipe leaked and caused an explosion in San Bruno, a city adjacent to San Francisco. The fire destroyed around 40 homes and significantly damaged over 100 others.
O’Neill’s house was less than half a mile away from the center of the main explosion.
“I could place my house on every map the news showed of the explosion,” he said.
Sophomore Genevieve Bennett is O’Neill’s niece.
World Civilization teacher Fern O’Brien also has a sister who lives right on the outskirts of the fire. Her first reaction at hearing the news was disbelief.
“I thought, ‘Oh, it must be somewhere else in San Bruno’,” O’Brien said.
She said she calmed down after her sister contacted her to say she was safe inside the Bayhill Shopping Center, where people had gathered to escape the fire.
“The magnitude of what has happened is unbelievable for us,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien described the close-knit community, saying that it takes care of its neighbors. Everyone grieves for one another’s disasters.
Sophomore Grace Navarrot has a sister in San Bruno who escaped the fire too. Navarrot said her sister worried more about her neighbor’s burnt house rather than her own.
According to Navarrot, the community has support groups sponsored by the Red Cross and Blue Cross that meet up in the park for those who need the extra help.
Navarrot and her sister blame the Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) company. “They need to take their job more seriously and stop scamming people for their money when they are not doing their job correctly,” Navarrot said.
For the first time, Navarrot saw PG&E workers double checking power lines while she was in Woodland. This action was “something they would never do,” Navarrot said.
Sophomore Aimee Davis shared Navarrot’s opinion that PG&E is at fault. “It makes me cautious, to make sure I don’t smell gas in my own home,” Davis said.
On Sept. 13, PG&E released a statement that it would be funding $100 million to rebuild San Bruno.
“It’s critical that the public [is] assured that PG&E is rigorously monitoring its pipelines and responsibly maintaining its system in accordance with proven industry practices,” PG&E President Chris Johns said at a press conference.
Sophomore Malia Fujisawa claims she needs more than just that.
“The next step would be figuring out what really happened so that in the future, it can be prevented from ever happening again,” Fujisawa said.
