The Pipe Was Described by an Accounting Entry | San Bruno Pipeline Disaster, 2010

At twenty-two minutes past five on a Thursday evening, more than sixty alarms arrived on one console in a control room in San Francisco. Not over the course of an hour. Within a few seconds. Forty minutes later, one of the operators said it out loud on a recorded line. "we've got a major problem at Milpitas and we've over pressured the whole peninsula." Nine minutes after that, in a residential street in San Bruno, a thirty-inch gas transmission line tore open. The crater was about seventy-two feet long and twenty-six feet wide. A piece of pipe twenty-eight feet long and weighing about three thousand pounds was thrown a hundred feet and landed in the street. Eight people were killed. Thirty-eight houses were destroyed. The company's records said the pipe was seamless. It was not. The entry in the geographic information system was loaded in 1998 from a record sheet written in 1977 — and the material description on that sheet came from a journal voucher of 1956, an accounting entry that moved material costs from one job order to another. The entry contained an erroneous material description. Seamless pipe was not available, and still is not available, in diameters above twenty-six inches. The company's own integrity management director said so. This video is built on one document: the official accident report of the National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB/PAR-11/01, adopted 30 August 2011. Every number on screen carries its page. Where this video steps outside the report to say what it thinks, the screen says so. CHAPTERS 0:00 Sixty alarms in a few seconds 2:20 One — the normal state 6:16 Two — the night 16:05 Three — the cascade 24:49 Four — the investigation 34:24 Five — what it means SOURCE National Transportation Safety Board, Pipeline Accident Report "Pacific Gas and Electric Company Natural Gas Transmission Pipeline Rupture and Fire, San Bruno, California, September 9, 2010" NTSB/PAR-11/01, adopted 30 August 2011. Public domain. https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Accide... MUSIC Music: Out of the Skies, Under the Earth by Chris Zabriskie - released under CC-BY 4.0. Music: Chance, Luck, Errors in Nature, Fate, Destruction As a Finale by Chris Zabriskie - released under CC-BY 4.0. Music: Virtues Inherited, Vices Passed On by Chris Zabriskie - released under CC-BY 4.0. Music: Readers! Do You Read? by Chris Zabriskie - released under CC-BY 4.0. chriszabriskie.com IMAGES The photographs and technical drawings in this video are illustrations, generated for this film. They are not photographs of the accident, the site, or the people involved. The only documentary material here is the text of the report itself.