San Bruno fire: Panel named to probe cause
David R. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle October 15, 2010 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Friday, October 15, 2010
UC Davis Chancellor Emeritus Larry Vanderhoef will lead the panel, which will investigate the causes of the Sept. 9 blast and fire that leveled a San Bruno neighborhood and killed eight people.
Other panelists, appointed Thursday by the California Public Utilities Commission, include officials with an electrical workers union and the California Council on Science and Technology, and a former official of Sacramento's municipal utility.
In addition, one of the panelists, Paula Rosput Reynolds, once served as an executive at a PG&E Corp. subsidiary that ran an interstate natural gas pipeline. More recently, she led the team that restructured the troubled insurance giant American International Group.
The utilities commission has already launched its own investigation into the San Bruno blast, as has the National Transportation Safety Board. But the independent panel's investigation has a broader purpose. Its five members will look for any systemic problems within PG&E that could have led to the explosion. It will also look for problems within the utilities commission itself.
"First and foremost, we have to find out what happened," Vanderhoef said. "Then we can figure out how whatever might have been missed was missed."
<SNIP>View entire article here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/15/BAUL1FT02G.DTL&type=newsbayarea
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