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Showing posts with label Driscoll. Show all posts

Fatal blast bringing tight new rules or Better Investigators - Three persons near this fire deceased.

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WALNUT CREEK / Fatal blast bringing tight new rules / Lawmaker says buried utility lines need better marking

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, June 11, 2005






After a Senate committee hearing Friday into November's fuel-line blast in Walnut Creek that killed five workers, state Sen. Tom Torlakson said he will push for tighter laws regulating how hazardous underground utilities are marked and how construction crews can avoid them.
Current methods of protecting utilities are "very ad hoc, and that's not right. That's not safe," Torlakson, D-Antioch, said after the two-hour meeting at Walnut Creek City Hall.
Workers who mark utilities may require special certification and should employ more advanced technology than they currently use, Torlakson said, echoing suggestions made by some speakers. He also suggested that fines levied for accidents may need to be heftier.
It was the first public hearing since the Nov. 9 blast, in which a backhoe operator installing an East Bay Municipal Utility District water main hit a buried fuel line, releasing a stream of gas ignited by nearby welders.
The catastrophe has prompted several investigations, a raft of lawsuits and calls for new laws. Officials from workplace safety regulator Cal/OSHA appearing at Friday's hearing said they would consider new laws and regulations after consulting a panel of state and industry experts next month.
"The thing that stands out about this incident is its disturbing simplicity," said Len Welsh, acting director of Cal/OSHA. "We need a system that is resilient to human performance errors."
Cal/OSHA last month blamed Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, saying it failed to mark a bend in its fuel line. It issued the firm two "willful" violations -- the stiffest possible penalty -- and fined it $140,000, while the utility district, the contractor and a mapping firm received "serious" citations.
Kinder Morgan officials, who say they properly marked the line and provided maps showing the bend that was struck, are appealing the ruling. Company officials did not attend the hearing, but sent a letter saying the firm -- which operates 10,000 miles of pipelines in 21 states -- is "retaining additional third-party expertise concerning line marking practices, " providing more training and education and buying "state of the art line locating equipment."
Currently, state law requires Bay Area excavators, before digging, to call a nonprofit service that in turn contacts the owners of any nearby underground pipelines and utilities. Those owners must locate and mark their lines or advise workers of their location. Should those workers approach the line, they must dig by hand to expose it and protect it.
But Torlakson, EBMUD General Manager Dennis Diemer and others asked why there are no rules specifying exactly when utility owners should, for example, use paint to mark the path of a line or dig "potholes" that expose the line from the surface.
Mark Breslin, executive director of the Engineering and Utility Contractors Association, which represents about 400 companies, said the Walnut Creek explosion was "only a symptom of a recurring and pervasive problem in marking utilities in the state."
Also at the meeting, state Fire Marshal Ruben Grijalva said his pipeline safety division was within two weeks of issuing its report on the Walnut Creek blast. He said his investigators also believe it was caused by "the line not being properly marked" and could seek fines up to $500,000.
"There was enough regulation and legislation in place so that this should not have happened," Grijalva said. "It just wasn't followed."
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California Bus Crash Sends Nine Disabled Adults To Hospital

By PETE BENNETT - Contra Costa Watch E

This victim was Danville resident Chad Cordon, his family is Mormon who attended Alamo 1st, Alamo CA,  Across the street just a month earlier was the deadly Kinder Morgan explosion where 10 years later super investor Warren Buffett arrives with 250 million dollar investment.



California Bus Crash Sends Nine Disabled Adults To Hospital

Some of the clients can't speak and firefighters had difficulty communicating with them.


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California (AP) -- Inattentive driving may be to blame for a Friday morning bus crash that sent nine developmentally disabled adults to area hospitals, Walnut Creek police said.
About 9 a.m. a small bus operated by San Francisco-based Trans-Metro Express carrying nine passengers with various disabilities crashed head-on into a concrete pile on Lilac Drive under Interstate 680, behind Kaiser Hospital.
All nine passengers and the driver were taken to three different hospitals. The driver and one passenger had serious injuries but were stabilized at John Muir Medical Center, Lt. Loren Cattolico said.
The driver may have been talking to passengers when he veered left onto an island and crashed into the large concrete pillar, Cattolico said.
Cattolico did not release names of the driver or passengers, saying the reports would not be completed until Monday or Tuesday.
Buses from several companies contracted by the Regional Center of the East Bay pick up about 2,500 developmentally disabled adults every day and take them to hundreds of centers and programs in Contra Costa and Alameda counties, said Jim Burton, executive director of the center. The Regional Center coordinates the programs and transportation for each of the participants in the East Bay.
The bus that crashed Friday morning was on its way to Christmas parties at two vocational centers in Lafayette.
"They're not capable of traveling independently so they're picked up by this bus company," said Jacquie Allen, program director at Futures Explored, one of the centers.
Allen hurried to Kaiser to help identify the passengers and contact family members when she heard about the crash.
"They just looked like they were scared," she said.
Allen brought two of the passengers back to Futures in time for part of the Christmas festivities.
Some of the clients at Futures can't speak and firefighters had difficulty communicating with them.
Six of the moderately injured people were taken into Kaiser for evaluation, in case they were not able to alert rescue workers to an injury, a fire official said.
Neither Allen nor Burton could recall a traffic accident in the program in recent history.
"This will be thoroughly investigated," Burton said.
The Regional Center began working with Trans-Metro Express for busing about a year ago, Burton said. The California Highway Patrol had no record of citations or accidents for the company.
A company spokeswoman referred all questions to the Regional Center.



Caltrans inspectors said the crash did not damage the support pillar, Walnut Creek police reported.
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