By Noah Arroyo
We don't yet know if the San Bruno fire is a horrific accident or an equally horrific mistake. But Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which owns and operates the gas line that ruptured, has a history of incidents that look a lot like this one. Some of these incidents have caused power outages. Others have blown things up, or injured people.
The company also has a history taking money that ought to go to maintenance and diverting it into fat corporate profits.
In December of 2003, a cable fire at the Mission Substation of the Golden Gate Control Center caused a more than 100,000 people to lose power. The California Public Utilities Commission inspected the incident and found that PG&E suffered from general procedural laziness, and that "PG&E failed to follow three recommendations made in its 1996 Root Cause Analysis Report following [a] 1996 fire."
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