earthquake prone area is more than a little alarming. so, thank you for calling the hearing. >> good afternoon supervisors. i'm ramneck saini with pg&e. senior director of gas asset management and system operations to talk further about the details of the incident that happened november 27th. first of all, i would like to thank our first responders including the san francisco fire department, the san francisco

department of emergency management who worked with our crews to safely secure the area on the day of the incident. we understand that this emergency deeply -- you know, deeply affects the families if the neighborhood and we are fully here and committed to provide any assistance. we're here to take any questions. >> good afternoon. thank you for the opportunity to speak. at pg&e safety is our top priority. we're grateful for the collaboration and hard work of the san francisco fire department, police department, san francisco department of emergency management and san francisco human services agency during and after the incident. on monday november 27th just after 10:00 a.m. pg&e crews

reported to a gas odor on mission street. while on the way to the scene we received the report of the explosion. between 10:20 and 10:35 crews arrived on scene and more dispatched to help and we worked with the san francisco fire department to make the area safe. there was a high concentration of gas in the area. we assessed the situation and came up with the plan to stop the flow of gas. we came up the strategy of digging up concrete to physically squeeze the pipe in the area to shut off the gas. since pg&e's gas system is connected grids, it often

requires more than two squeeze points to stop the flow of gas at a location. once the flow stopped, we started the process of excavation, performing pressure tests on the pipelines in the area, determining the location of the leak and then making repairs. crews completed this work on tuesday. as our crews worked, our customer care representatives started to support our customers impacted. customer care representatives canvassed the area to make sure the immediate feeds of the customers of apartments damaged and those temporarily without gas service were taken care of. shutting in the gas impacted 470 customers and by tuesday night, gas was safely restored to all

who were able to receive service. pg&e called in other services from the bay area. for the residents of the building damaged, our report has temporary housing, financial assistance through claims and more to address a more permanent solution. we have engaged a specialized third party engineering firm to help determine the cause of the incident. these type of investigations typically require researching records, testing evidence and other steps. we have noticed the cpnc of the incident and support their investigation as well. as we do with all incidents of the nature, we worked closely with first responders, including the san francisco fire department to make the area safe and with the emergency management of response and

recommendation. we coordinated with the san francisco red cross. i wanted to talk about the work we do to ensure the safety and integrity of gas lines. our program governs the approach we take for knowing our assets and the condition of our assets, what threats and risks the assets pose and then developing mitigation strategies to address the risk. through that program, we're constantly rooking at the pipeline to reduce risk. enforcing quality standards and conducting leak surveys on a frequent basis. in fact it was surveyed in july of this year and none were found. for us it's having trained and confident personnel, best in class tools and proper procedures in place. when something goes wrong, we figure out why and how to prevent something similar from

happening again. we'll continue to support our customers. thank you for providing us to present and i'm happy to answer questions. >> so, you don't have a preliminary theory of the cause of the explosion? >> not at this time. it's under investigation with exponent and we expect to have that investigation completed over the course of the next month or two. >> and so when you arrived on site there wasn't anything that was obvious to the crews that might have caused this rather dangerous incident? that we can know you're taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen anywhere else in san francisco? >> so in determining the source of the leak, we were able to determine that the leak was coming from an offshoot of one of the six inch mains that runs down mission street.

the main is a six inch steel line installed in 1992 and the source of the leak was actually from a plastic off take from that line. we do know where the leak occurred but in terms of cause, that aspect is what is under investigation from exponent. >> so the steel pipes have off shoots and that's where the leak occurred? >> yes. >> and the explosion occurred when someone in the home then tried to light their stove or -- >> i don't have any information on that aspect of the investigation. i would think the fire department would be investigating that. but i don't know for certain. >> how common is it that you -- when an explosion occurs or when there's a danger, a leak is

identified that you couldn't turnoff the gas using a value, that you actually have to dig up the asphalt in the street? >> we frequently have to dig up asphalt to squeeze our pipelines to make an area safe. based on the configuration of the distribution network, we look at multiple different alternatives every time we have to shut in gas due to a leak. we evaluate options that are squeezing pipes, isolating values, larger zones of our system to determine which one could be executed most quickly and while preserving customer service, while also preserving the safety of our public and employees. so in this particular case, the initial isolation strategy that we developed couldn't be executed because of the fact that our employees couldn't

safely access the area because of the gas in the area. that's why we had to step back and develop alternative strategies and the one we selected was two value and two squeeze points? >> do you have statistics about the average time it takes to turnoff the gas when there's an explosion. is this an unusual case or par for the course? >> we do track that information, i don't have the numbers with me. we could certainly have that discussion with you about average time for shutting in the gas. this was not extremely extensive because of the access to the area and having to shift our isolation strategies, it did take a little longer than typical. but not significantly extended.

>> was there a warning system that the leak was happening in the first place before the point of explosion? or did that notify them there was a situation? >> we had an employee on the way to the site when the explosion happened. >> so how was the fire department aware? did they get a call, that someone smelled gas, is that what it was? >> yeah. >> there's no alarm system in

place. >> it would trigger someone to investigate. that didn't happen in this incident. there was no alarm in the control center, it was triggered by a phone call. >> that's really worrying, that there was a gas leak large enough to cause an explosion and that damaged several houses but pg&e wasn't aware of a major leak in the system until it was reported. that is not comforting to residents of san francisco. i would appreciate if you could follow up with me, i'm surprised you didn't come prepared with that information. i think supervisor sheehy hit it on the head, the biggest concern to us other than the wellbeing of our constituents that were

impacted is three hours is unacceptable time to shut off the gas when there's a leak that caused an explosion. you know, we're lucky no one was injured here. but it certainly is not comforting to us. we don't know the cause but we know where the leak came from. we know it wasn't possible to cut the gas off quickly.

our decision to ask for residential review, a pipeline on a development on a steep hill was absolutely the right thing to do given that these circumstances exist with the company. i hope you will work with a project sponsor because i know the project sponsor has had a very difficult time getting pg&e to work with him to get him the data he needs to come up with a true safety plan in the unfortunate event that any gas line is disrupted when the project is built. and i'm looking at both of you and asking you with that homeowner who wants to build a house. that you work closely.

i'm not going to green light this project especially after this incident until we have a safety plan in place. >> leading from the big pipe to the building or was that connected to several buildings? >> that was a section of pipe leading off of the main pipeline. it wasn't actually connected. it was a separate piece of pipeline. >> what did that lead to? >> nothing, cut off. >> a natural leak took place. just a pipe to nowhere? >> as it exists now, yes. >> so, seems pretty clear to me that that wouldn't be the building owner's responsibility,

right? >> i -- >> i mean this is -- >> it's our assets. >> it's your assets. >> it's pg&e assets. >> what happens to the families who have been displaced. are you taking responsibility and making sure they're housed? >> absolutely. our customer care team has worked to place them in temporary housing providing financial assistance and currently working through making sure they have what they need, at this point in time and for permanent solutions going forward. >> you'll make a permanent solution for them. how many of these pipes to nowhere do you have in the city that might potentially blow up a house? >> so it's part of the investigation that's underway. they'll look for what actually caused the event and the next step after that is for us to

look more broadly at where else might we have a similar situation in our system and to remedy that across our service territory. whenever we do a causele investigation or incident investigation of something that happens on our system or in the industry, we take that and apply it -- apply the learnings to our entire system. the result of the investigation we received from exponent, we'll do an extended condition analysis, to allow us to evaluate our system for that particular issue and then go through and do whatever action is necessary to address that issue. >> so plastic pipes, i mean, carrying gas, was that industry standard? >> yes. >> really? underground plastic pipes that don't link to anything -- i mean, i'm just trying to understand -- >> so i think the results of the

investigation will help us really understand what led to the incident and what the corrective actions need to be. i think there still needs to be a lot of information gathered before we'll be able to really say what caused this event. and to know what needs to be done to remedy it going forward. >> so, obviously this -- i know, it's happened and i kind of mentioned this, there's been pipe replacement, repairing the infrastructure that makes a lot of sense. this obviously hasn't been part of the process or has it? >> the pipeline was installed in 1992. >> in the new pipelines that you're laying, do we have plastic pipes to nowhere? >> the new pipelines that we're laying are mains and services to customer's homes. >> are they plastic? >> plastic and steel depending on the environmental conditions.

>> are they easier to shut off? >> they're shut off via values or squeeze points similar to -- >> there's no process improvements -- it sounds like it's fairly standard you have to dig up the street to shut off after a gas leak. >> it is a standard practice that is part of our emergency response. we shut values or dig them up. >> this is not something you remedy when you put in new pipes in san francisco. >> we install values, using

values is not necessarily faster in every case for shutting in gas than digging up the street and squeezing the pipe. >> i'm trying to understand, we were changing all the pipes in the city, block by block. i will say you guys are incredibly professional when you did it. i don't see cause for complaint. it seems there's a weakness in the system, at least from my point of view, if you have gas leaking for three hours, that you may want -- you know, you may want to address when you're laying new pipes to make it easier to shut off pipes, we're if an earthquake zone, so i would have thought that might have been considered as you lay new pipes to make it easier to access to shut them off when there's a leak. >> it's certainly considered as

the way we design the systems and install new systems. however, we do still view digging and squeezing as one of the tools in our tool kit as we look at how we isolate a system when an emergency happens. >> this will be the last -- i have one more after this. perhaps you could follow up on us the types of measures for resilience are being built in -- in a city like san francisco that's dense and prone to earthquakes, three hours of gas leaking is a challenge. and given that -- you still have more to replace obviously because this block has to be replaced. so going forward, if there's a way to strengthen the system so we don't end up in a scenario of three hours of gas leaking, that would be good. i want to check on the notification process, who is in charge, how long did it take. were people notified quickly? what was the surrounding area, were you certain when you made the notifications that you had

-- you notified enough area that people could get out, there was no -- >> i don't know the detail of the customer notification that took place. i can't -- >> that's fine. thank you. >> okay. we might have additional questions after hearing from other speakers and public comment. thank you. so next i wanted to call up -- sorry, i'm looking for my list here. we'll start with the captain. jack hart, if you want to make any statements? >> thank you for your time. i'm the captain of engelside police service. my officers were involved assisting with evacuations. listening to the comments, one

of the concerns is not just the three hours it took to turn it off, but the three hours it took for the gas to dissipate. pg&e was great being embedded with the fire department to go and measure block by block and area by area to determine the concentration of the gas, to determine if additional evacuations needed to take place but this is a great reminder to me, i have been in the events before, large scale events requiring evacuations in a short amount of time and confusing situations. i wanted to say the department of emergency management did an excellent job of sheltering in place and evacuation stuff. but it's a reminder to us as well to be more proactive, just the basic neighborhood. several of my school resource officers got phone calls from area schools.

not that they were within the immediate area of it but hearing the helicopter overhead brings concern wondering what the situation was. it's a repineder to me and my team to be more vigilant to push out notifications to as many people as possible in short element of time as possible and overlapping with the fire department and in the police department. i also want to make a shameless plug for the neighborhood empowerment network and block champion programs. one of the heroic actions of the fire department, they assisted with the evacuation of an elderly gentleman that was blind and deaf. and the ability to track that person down was difficult. we weren't sure how many people were hearing the messages to leave. you know, dm blasts out evacuation orders in different languages which is great, but what about the folks we don't know about, that are trapped in and reminds me of your first

item on the agenda. i would be concerned about folks without the where with all. i i think it helps the fire department, that would have helped us on the 4000 block of mission and the areas in between. i know a learning thing for me is going to be to push the program block by block to help us do quicker evacuations in any of these situations. >> how many people were evacuated due to the incident? do you know? >> i don't have the exact numbers. i know the ymca had opened their doors. dem worked with the fire department to get a space for people so they would be able to

convene, have a place to rest and a cup of coffee and figure out the next steps from representatives at pg&e. >> thank you so much. any other questions? no. thank you captain. and next we'll hear from the department of emergency management. >> thank you. san francisco department of emergency management, i'm the public relations officer. the role of department of emergency management is to support the responding agencies, maintain situational awareness and give information to the public and stakeholders. the dem learns about it two ways, 911 call or pg&e notifies us. upon receiving the report public safety dispatchers started

sending firefighters to investigate the leak and our investigators contact pg&e if they haven't already to respond to the gas leak. and we informed the watch officer who can coordinate additional resources and send alert and warnings to the public. the gas leak at 3971 mission call followed the protocol, public dispatchers received multiple 911 calls about a gas odor in the area. by 9:55, fire departments arrived on scene. pg&e, the police department and parking control officers were dispatched to the scene. at 10:14 we were advised of an

explosion. we reached more than 182 contacts in the area and an alert next door and on social media. subsequent alerts were pushed out in spanish. and we notified the board of supervisors and provided notification as well. this is just -- we sent out multiple notifications and we took a step where we deployed a field incident management team, consisting of two emergency coordinators. the primary objective was to provide situational awareness, confirm the evacuation parameter and potential evacuation center in the area. over the course of the response, the team maintained communication. establishment of the evacuation center at the mission ymca provided language services to the evacuees and for evacuees

with disabilities and provided information to residents and evacuees. by 4:07, all residents with exception of those at the address were allowed back in homes but many did not have gas service. we remained in place at the evacuation center until it closed and they were receiving short term housing services, services from the red cross and mid to long-term housing assistance from the human services agency. we want to say that it takes a whole community, bless you. we want to say it takes a whole community to effectively respond to an emergency. we want to thank the mission ymca that the staff opened their doors to their neighbors. the american red cross deserves thanks. their volunteers at the scene of nearly every emergency supporting our responders. and in our community there were a lot of neighbors and businesses that took care of one another. they deserve special thanks.

to the committees members, we thank you for your staffing at department of public emergency management. through the month of november we have taken the call within 10 seconds. your support of the coordinators that send out alert, coordinate resources are all funded by the grant. at this time i'm happy to answer questions you may have. >> thank you. we're thrilled to hear that we have met the national standard in terms of 911 response times. this was the committee that that hearing was held. any questions for -- no? >> i have one question. i'm just wondering, in the case of emergencies like this, do we have sites designated in districts so that we as

supervisors know this is the plan, that if there is something like this, the -- we have made a pre-arranged arrangement with the ymca and notified as a supervisor. >> that's an excellent question. we have a shelter data base of 150 facilities we reach out to. we have to make sure they're functional after the emergency. they need to be inspected and need to be able to accommodate the people that are displaced. we work closely with the human services agency on this component. we can reach out to private sector partners in the school district and the hotel council as well to add to the list. >> i think what would be helpful

actually if there was something like this again, how would we know? >> we would make the information available to the board. >> next we're going to hear from rex hail from the fire department. >> good afternoon supervisors. >> chief. >> i'm rex hail from the san francisco fire department. this is deputy chief of operations. on november 27th, 2017, at 9:53 a.m. engine 32 responded on a single unit dispatch to 3987 missions street for reported gas leak. upon arrival, a heavy smell of gas and bubbling water along the curb indicating there may be a significant gas leak from under the street.

we called pg&e. we began to evacuate buildings and special call battalion six. there was an explosion that caused the garage door and two floor windows to blow out. immediately requested a first alarm dispatch and continued to evacuate buildings. at 10:15, it was confirmed that 3971 was the primary building and directed units to continue evacuation of the surrounding buildings. at 10:20 a.m., the command post was moved for safety reasons and further entree denied until assessing the situation. pg&e arrived during the assessment. advised to move the command post

and evacuate both buildings on both sides of the streets. this evacuation was complete at approximately 11:12 a.m. san francisco police department assists with the evacuations and traffic control. at 12:55 pg&e notified us that they stopped the slow leak of gas. there was still residual gas, and monitored of the buildings. thank you. i can take questions if you like. >> i don't know if you're going to be able to answer the question, but out of curiosity, when the fire department and all of the city departments we're hearing from today respond to an incident like this that is caused by a malfunction of pg&e assets as they're called, does the company reimburs the city for the cost of evacuating --

do you know? >> no, i do not. >> that's interesting. and because i know you're both extremely experienced, have you -- have either of you responded to explosions like this before in san francisco or anywhere for that matter? >> i personally have not responded to anything like this before. >> so you don't -- you haven't seen other examples of how long it would take to turnoff the gas and -- >> we've had gas leaks before. a lot of times construction in the street, will hit a gas pipe. it's easier because they have dug into the street at that point. but -- they had their work cut out for them in this one.

>> so in your experience, the cause of the leak would be physical interaction with the pipe. that's clearly not the case here. >> it is common with the construction. >> do you have questions supervisor sheehy? no? fewer? no? thank you for everything you did in this case. and that you do every day. we appreciate it. then finally we wanted to hear from ben aims of the human services agency before we open this item up for public comment. to find out how the families are doing that have been impacted by the fire, ben, you're one of the unsung heros of our city and so appreciate everything you do every time there's an emergency like this. >> good afternoon supervisors, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. i think that after the event

happened, that our response was incredibly well thought out, very fluid, the department of emergency management was out on the scene, they called me, we had several conference calls and talked about where are we going to take evacuees and what type of services were we going to provide for them and then we identified the fact that we had individuals not able to return to their units and we had the red cross out on scene and the red cross, standard operating procedure went and took the families and provided hotel stays for them. and that will be for about two days. and then normally my agency would step in and do an interview with a tenant, find out what their needs are. if they meet the criteria for long-term housing. this was an explosion and not a fire and would they be able to

participate in my fire program or not, thank god i didn't have to have that discussion because pg&e stepped up and right away they took responsibility for the needs of the tenants. they provided them cash assistance, they made sure that all their needs were meant. they found housing and i continued to work with pg&e and i'm still continuing to work with them about identifying long-term housing needs for the family. it's interesting to note it's a four unit building and the families in this building were very close-knit, they have lived in the building for a very long time and the one request was that they wanted to stay together, they wanted to stay in the mission. so pg&e contacted me and i contacted the san francisco apartment owners association and i found a building in the mission at 20th with four vacancies and we were able to

keep the families together. kim who i have been working at with pg&e, they showed the families and they elected not to use it because of parking issues. they were able to identify another building on ocean avenue. so the needs of the tenants are being taken care of. in that week, we had two fires, two of them supervisor ronen in your district and then a fire that displaced a 68 unit building that resulted in us opening an emergency building at 1:00 a.m.: please stand by

the pipeline that we were talking about, on the fulsome project, so the gas that goes through the transmission level pipeline is much more serious. this is november 9th, at 7:45, a truck hit this building, and there was a smell of gas. and so there was a gas leak and the fire department came very quickly, and basically just knocked on doors and told people "get out, get out, get out" and eventually police and pg&e came and the incident looked like it was pretty much over, people were let back in

their houses around 9:37. [buzzer] should i -- >> [off mic] >> so i just wanted you to be aware of another incident, if you want to do lessons learned on that. but i think more important is in district 9 and district 10, we do have these major gas transmission pipelines. and even though i have put in comments on a number of projects in portrero hill, and pennsylvania where there's a kink in the transmission level, the planning department doesn't really seem to take into account the impact that construction could have and kind of building around these big pipelines. >> thank you. thank you, so much. next speaker, please? >> hello, my name is marilyn waterman and i'm a group of

concerned neighbors in bruenel heights, regarding assessing the safety of a building around major gas transmission pipelines in san francisco. so i want to thank you for providing this forum. if we learn anything from this explosion, it's that these accidents are serious, they are potentially catastrophic and they need to be prevented via a high degree of caution and rigorous safety measures. these types of hearings are most welcome by our neighborhood and we look forward to your findings and thank you for uridyl jens. -- your diligence. those are my prepared remarks. i have a couple comments, i'm quite impressed by the response of the responders. it sounds like the emergency response at the bottom of the

cliff was very well-orchestrated. i continue to be alarmed by what constitutes safety in the eyes of pg&e. and i think some of that was heard tonight. and i think within this culture of safety, i mean, pg&e could look at something and say look, we've got it covered. this is absolutely fine. but when we have pipeline safety experts look at this saying, it's what's not being looked at that you have to be careful about. >> thank you. is there any other member of the public that would like to comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. i just wanted to thank all of the city departments for not only doing such a terrific job in this case showing up, safely

evacuating the area, safely communicating with the neighbors and with officials and the department. helping to house the individuals who were displaced by this fire. it's a moment to feel a lot of pride for the city and i also want to thank you so much for taking the time to sit through the item before this, we didn't expect it to take so long. so thank you for sticking it out and for continuing to be here. i also wasn't aware of the rule that the mission y -- role the mission ymca played. i want to thank you them, so wonderful for community-based organizations step up and help the city respond to disasters like this one. and i thought supervisor fewer's question was a good one and it's good for us to be aware that these organizations play a role. the red cross is always in

there and then just to echo captain hart, the neighbors helping each other is really a beautiful sight to see, and something we want to replicate all throughout san francisco. we know our neighbors better than city emergency response departments know and we can really look out for each other. so thank you, captain hart, for putting that plug in for that program. you know, i will ask -- i'm grateful pg&e showed up today that the company has remaind in communication with my office since the beginning of this explosion. i would ask that, i'm going to continue this item to the -- ask my colleagues to continue this item so when you get the report back that we have an opportunity to come back and explore the cause. i continue to be confused, like my colleague, about what do you

call the plastic pipe to nowhere and what function that serves and whether or not we, pg&e is upgrading its system as it's replacing pipes throughout the city to more quickly respond when there are leaks and god forbid, you know, there are no future explosions, but when there is one [coughing] i look forward to that additional information. i want to turn it over to supervisor sheehy and then i will finish because i'm coughing. >> i just want to echo supervisor ronan and really deep appreciation for the way the city agencies responded. and the resources that were brought to bear. and i do also look forward to maybe getting more information from pg&e.

i would like to know what things will look like going forward since we are tearing up streets and replacing pipes. if there's a way to mitigate against three hours of leaking gas, that would be great to know. and that may be something we look into for the future. but, again, thank you to first responders in san francisco. great work. >> yes, i would like to echo that to our first responders. my husband was one for many years. but i really want to thank also benjamin aims from the human services agency. i have to say when there's a three-alarm fire in my neighborhood seeing him there on site with all the people displaced and with blankets around them in the middle of the night and it's really cold. it was so reassuring that he was there and that he represented our city in caring for these people that are in the middle of the night out of their homes. so thank you so much to everyone. >> thank you, and with that, can i entertain a motion to

continue this item to the call of the chair. without objection that motion passes. [gavel] are there any other items? >> there is no further business. >> thank you, this meeting is adjourned.