That freakish gas flare erupting from the sidewalk in the Central District on February 24th was an ominous double-warning about the danger of relying on fossil fuels and specifically depending on Puget Sound Energy (PSE), a private, for-profit gas company whose owners have repeatedly shown that they are more interested in their wealth than in the safety of our community or the planet.
This latest PSE fire shows why the Amazon Tax working people won last year was only a start, and why we need a massive program to fund Green New Deal renewable energy projects, paid for by big business, and take PSE into democratic public ownership, so that working people can reorient the company away from fracked gas and toward clean, renewable energies.
Thanks to the expert intervention of union workers from the Fire Department and Puget Sound Energy, the Central District fire was extinguished.
But it could have been much worse. This was just the latest in a string of gas fires and explosions involving pipes controlled by PSE.
In 2016, an explosion in PSE’s gas lines leveled a city block in Greenwood, injuring nine firefighters, destroying three small businesses, and damaging dozens of buildings. The state Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) found that PSE broke state law and put the public at risk by failing to deactivate an old section of gas piping. The agency concluded that “the leak and explosion would not have occurred but for PSE’s improper abandonment of the service line.” It ultimately fined PSE a whopping $1.5 million for this neglect.
In 2019, due in part to incorrect mapping information about the location of underground gas pipes, construction workers in North Seattle inadvertently severed a gas line, causing flames to shoot up from the ground and sending three workers to the hospital.
Then last July, road repair crews in West Seattle who were provided misinformation from PSE about the location of its underground gas pipes accidentally broke gas lines twice. PSE is supposed to maintain up-to-date maps of its underground piping system, but apparently those maps were defective.
These PSE mis-mapping incidents are unfortunately not isolated cases. Following the Central District fire, a worker for one of the companies responsible for locating PSE’s underground facilities for construction and excavation projects wrote to my Council office to note that “the mapping system for the power and gas facilities hasn’t been updated for over a year, and there are several facilities that are mis-mapped, as well as numerous areas where gas services and mains are faulty and unlocatable. Given all this, I’m not surprised by [the Central District] gas leak and am grateful that no one was hurt. Due to faulty infrastructure, I expect such issues as seen in [this] leak are likely to happen again with more frequency.”
