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It was Crankshaft
Sep. 10th, 2010 08:21 pmTo me, natural gas explosions are things that happen with some regularity, suddenly blowing up one house and perhaps damaging a neighbor's house in the process. So color me croggled by the scope and damage of yesterday's explosion in San Bruno, CA. I'm very thankful Lucy Huntzinger and John Bartelt are fine, that they and their home were only rattled by the blast that occurred 2-3 miles away.
Online photos findable through any Google search show the devastation that killed at least 4 people, injured at least 52 more, destroyed 38 homes, and damaged still others. But it was the San Francisco Chronicle article where neighborhood residents told their own stories from when it started that really brought the story home.
For example, "Freddy Tobar was upstairs in his kitchen getting ready to feed his Chihuahua Chiquita, when he heard popping sounds from under the ground and felt the house shaking. He looked outside and saw his backyard crumble into the earth. Trees disintegrated into flames."
I can so picture that happening here, and just how horrifying it would be. Heck, I even have a natural gas pipeline running through the my property about 350 feet from the house.
Or the the story from the guy driving home from work and seeing the fireball between him and home, where his children were. They're all fine, but OMG.
Then I got to another report and started laughing: "Jerry Guernsey had spent the day working on his '57 Chevy on Concord Way, just blocks from the impact, where he's lived for 25 years. He'd fired up the barbecue in his backyard when it sounded like a jetliner had dropped from the sky."
Why my laughter? Because in another world, the explosion wasn't a gas line erupting, it wasn't an airplane crashing. It was Ed Crankshaft, lighting the coals in his Weber grill.
Online photos findable through any Google search show the devastation that killed at least 4 people, injured at least 52 more, destroyed 38 homes, and damaged still others. But it was the San Francisco Chronicle article where neighborhood residents told their own stories from when it started that really brought the story home.
For example, "Freddy Tobar was upstairs in his kitchen getting ready to feed his Chihuahua Chiquita, when he heard popping sounds from under the ground and felt the house shaking. He looked outside and saw his backyard crumble into the earth. Trees disintegrated into flames."
I can so picture that happening here, and just how horrifying it would be. Heck, I even have a natural gas pipeline running through the my property about 350 feet from the house.
Or the the story from the guy driving home from work and seeing the fireball between him and home, where his children were. They're all fine, but OMG.
Then I got to another report and started laughing: "Jerry Guernsey had spent the day working on his '57 Chevy on Concord Way, just blocks from the impact, where he's lived for 25 years. He'd fired up the barbecue in his backyard when it sounded like a jetliner had dropped from the sky."
Why my laughter? Because in another world, the explosion wasn't a gas line erupting, it wasn't an airplane crashing. It was Ed Crankshaft, lighting the coals in his Weber grill.
