Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has accidentally over-pressurized pipelines on its gas system more than 120 times since the San Bruno explosion - a rate that the company's top gas official says is unacceptable and that experts fear could increase the risk of a similar disaster. The San Bruno tragedy happened after an unexpected gas pressure surge ruptured a substandard weld under the Crestmoor neighborhood in September 2010. The blast and resulting fire killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. This year, federal rules went into effect requiring utilities for the first time to track and report instances in which pressure goes over a pipeline's designated maximum by a significant amount. Although many of PG&E's incidents are comparatively minor, the head of its gas operations ... Continue reading →

A judge has declared San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White a deadbeat divorcee and ordered the city to start garnisheeing $3,300 a month from her paycheck for spousal support to her ex-husband. Hayes-White says she stopped paying support about 14 months ago, after an incident in which her ex-hubby, Robert "Sean" White, grabbed and choked one of their sons while in a booze-fueled rage. In December, he pleaded no contest in San Mateo County Superior Court to a misdemeanor charge of child endangerment and cruelty. He is serving his sentence on a county sheriff's work detail and living in a rehab house. Last week, White went to San Francisco Superior Court demanding that the chief resume the spousal support she was ordered to pay when ... Continue reading →

(04-30) 16:17 PDT OAKLAND -- The federal court monitor tracking reforms in the Oakland police force said Monday that the effort had met "outright stagnation," and raised questions about officers' use of beanbag shotguns and other weapons during what he called a "military-type" response to Occupy demonstrations. The court-ordered reforms, many of them focused on how the department polices its own officers, haven't progressed in six months and have gone backward in the past year, said a report by the monitor, Robert Warshaw. Critics of the department said the findings brought Oakland's police force closer to a federal takeover. "Stagnation is troubling. After nine years, more progress should be made," said John Burris, one of two attorneys who brought a civil suit a decade ago ... Continue reading →

Pacific Gas and Electric Co., accused by state regulators of destroying a potentially significant surveillance video taken in a gas-system control center the night of the San Bruno pipeline explosion, now says the recording never existed. The California Public Utilities Commission recently charged the company with nearly 100 record-keeping and safety violations related to the Sept. 9, 2010, explosion and fire that killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. Some of them concern a video recording that investigators believe could have shed new light on how PG&E's control center in Brentwood dealt with the crisis in the minutes before and after the blast happened. For more than five months, PG&E said the video had been inadvertently recorded over. Then, in March, the company told state ... Continue reading →

A Pacific Gas and Electric Co. document that the company just disclosed to state regulators indicates the San Bruno pipeline that exploded in 2010 had a history of weld failure that by law should have prompted a test designed to head off such disasters. The document is a March 1989 memo summarizing a PG&E investigation into what caused a leak the previous year on the pipeline about 9 miles south of where the San Bruno blast eventually occurred. The memo said the likely culprit in October 1988 was a defective weld on a seam running along the pipe, the same type of failure that contributed to the San Bruno explosion. PG&E did not turn over the document until last month, well after federal and state ... Continue reading →

(04-19) 15:32 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- The state Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved a pair of fines Thursday totaling nearly $20 million against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. for failing to check for gas-line leaks in seven East Bay communities and for missing a deadline to turn over pipeline safety records. The larger of the two fines, $16.8 million, stems from the company's acknowledgement in December that it did not conduct federally mandated leak surveys for years on nearly 14 miles of gas distribution lines in Concord, Danville, Antioch, Pittsburg, Brentwood, Byron and Discovery Bay. Last month, a commission administrative law judge turned down the company's appeal of the fine. PG&E wanted the fine to be cut to $400,000, in part because it had disclosed ... Continue reading →

Aaron Lee Andrew Alan Vargas, 21, is arrested near his Hayward apartment on suspicion of felony hit-and-run and driving under the influence in connection with a crash in San Francisco at Mission and New Montgomery streets last August. At right, R. Topete of the Hayward police department oversees the transfer for the suspect to SFPD. (04-11) 13:52 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A 22-year-old Hayward man who was driving drunk when he ran over a Pennsylvania boy leaving a Giants game last year promised to "turn things around" for the injured child's family after a judge sentenced him Wednesday to a year in jail. Before being sentenced, Andrew Alan Vargas spoke to the court and expressed remorse to the family of Ryan White, the 9-year-old boy ... Continue reading →

The gunman accused of killing seven people at his former nursing school in Oakland came to Oikos University on Monday intending to kill an administrator who - unbeknownst to him - had left her job last year after he had dropped out, sources said Thursday. One Goh, 43, told investigators he was searching for Wonja Kim, the former assistant director of the nursing program at Oikos University, sources close to the case confirmed. Kim, of Danville, did not return calls seeking comment. Sources said she has been interviewed by Oakland police in the investigation. Authorities said that before leaving as assistant director of the program, she had been working part time at the Christian school doing both teaching and some administrative tasks - and had ... Continue reading →

Judith Seymour had the healing touch. Her parents were both nurses in New York before moving back to their native Guyana, and Seymour had been a certified nursing assistant before spending much of her career as a senior tax analyst. But when she was laid off, and at age 53, Seymour, who lived in San Jose, went back to nursing and was looking forward to graduating from Oikos University in June and getting her license. She regularly commuted to the school in Oakland and sometimes to the state prison in Vacaville, where she had clinical training, said her partner of eight years, Timothy Brown, 55, a union representative. "I'm in disbelief and shock right now," Brown said from the couple's home on Tuesday afternoon, having ... Continue reading →

(03-20) 17:58 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Pacific Gas and Electric Co. wants the state to offset millions of dollars in fines it is expected to levy against the company for the San Bruno disaster by the amount the utility spent last year testing its pipes and making other improvements, a PG&E executive said Tuesday. PG&E has said it expects the state to fine it at least $200 million for the September 2010 explosion of a gas-transmission pipeline in San Bruno that killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. On Tuesday, company executive Tom Bottorff said PG&E should receive credit for $221 million it took from shareholders last year to spend on pipe testing and other changes prompted by the disaster. It was money, he said, ... Continue reading →