Huge Explosion near SFO

[davisdog]

FYI, there was a 24" High Pressure Gas line that exploded in a neighorhood in the hills above San Francisco Airport this evening (~6:10 PM PT) in the community of San Bruno (which is on the approach path into SFO).  The original calls in all the confusion was that it that a commercial plane had gone down, and fire crews initially thought they were fighting a jet fuel feed fire until they realized a gas line was feeding it (flames shooting 100'+ right though houses in the neigborhood)....Dozens of homes have burned (several blocks in a high density neighbhord  and they are still fighting it as a 6th Alarm Municipal Fire response from all surrouding cites along with at least 20 State (wildfire) Enginess and a full compliment of Fire Fighting aircraft (at least 6 Tankers, 3 Choppers and 2 AirAttack supervisers (in OH-10's)...and a flock of news choppers getting in the way.  They had Oakland Center issue a TFR for the area and SFO had all incoming aircraft switch to instruments because of all the smoke.

Anyway, a heads up if somebody wants to look through the SFO and Norcal archives to look...I'm betting there is alot of chatter about it on the ATC frequencies but I havent had a chance to look.

ps....I dont know of any scanners that caught the fire dispatch for the local city area, but the CalFire (State) agency for the county is archived and you can hear all of the dispatches and traffic from the archives at http://www.firescan.net/cgi-bin/time.php  (select 151.370 / CZU and listen starting from about 18:15 for as long as you want).  You'll hear how they thought it was a plane down and how massive the response was (and the State response is only a fraction of what is out there fighting this).

pss...my sympathy to all those that are affeccted by this...you can read updates and see pitcures/video on any of the local news stations such as www.kgo.com

[tyketto]

I heard about this on my way home. My local NPR station broadcasts out of San Francisco and Sacramento, in which during one of their local news bumps had talked to the ATM at KSFO. The ATM there had said that it wasn't an aircraft that they know of, because with it being in proximity to KSFO, nothing left KSFO in that direction to cause it, and anything from any other fields would be in the Class B, requiring radar contact. So nothing from KSQL or anything nearby would have caused it.

Either way it goes, there should be something on this in the KSFO or KSQL archive.

BL.

[kittyranma]

Look for archives at 0100Z (9/10).  Jump to around 12-13:00 into the archive.  Tower and Departure has the most that I can hear so far.

[ferg2k]

United 519 mentions it about 13 minutes into this.  It seems to be the first ATC knew of it.
http://archive-server.liveatc.net/ksfo/KSFO-App-28LR-Sep-10-2010-0100Z.mp3

[davisdog]

That's right when the initial explosion happened (the fire dispatch was at 6h:12m:28s PM Local time (01:12 GMT).  Flames shot up ~100Ft in the air (and down the street) for the next 90Min + and then the aftermath burned all night.  You'd have a great view of it on the approach into 28L/R coming over the bay.  37 Homes destroyed, ~100 Damaged.  Only 4 known causalities so far, but if you've looked at the pictures you'll see there maybe more in the rubble.

I listened to some of the tower archives, and there is also alot of queries to the tower on what's burning in the hills into the 01:30 Archives (and I'm sure a lot later).  They had to bring an extra controller in on a dedicated frequency to keep all the news choppers, look louses in the Cessna's and Fire/Police/Medical aircraft separated.  I think they called that "transition control", although I don't think the freq they used is archived.

[tyketto]

I listened to some of the tower archives, and there is also alot of queries to the tower on what's burning in the hills into the 01:30 Archives (and I'm sure a lot later).  They had to bring an extra controller in on a dedicated frequency to keep all the news choppers, look louses in the Cessna's and Fire/Police/Medical aircraft separated.  I think they called that "transition control", although I don't think the freq they used is archived.

I'm surprised they don't already have a dedicated tower controller for helicopters transitioning into/out of Class B there. They certainly do at KLAS..

BL.

[SFOTA]

Look for archives at 0100Z (9/10).  Jump to around 12-13:00 into the archive.  Tower and Departure has the most that I can hear so far.

The first evidence of it on any feed that I could hear appears at 12:10 on KSFO Tower, when SKW6690 on approach says "what's going on in the hills up there?"  I did a bit of transcribing in case anyone's interested:

12:31: [someone] "That's one big fire that just started."
12:33: [Tower] "Yeah, I know, we were just looking at that.  That is huge!"
12:37: [someone] "Yep"
12:39: [someone, possibly SKW6143] "Yeah, something blew up."
12:41: [Tower] "Looks like it. That's not just a tree.  Something [fell?] over there" [Did he think, like many others, that a plane might have gone down, even though there were no departures or go-arounds on the westbound runways at the time?  Note also that the published missed approach for the Tipp Toe visual approach to 28L is to turn left heading 265, which would take an aircraft much closer to the fire site in the event of a go-around.]
[...]
13:58: [SWA274] "...looks like you got a pretty good fire up there."
14:00: [Tower] "Yeah it is. ... Looks like something might have exploded up there."
14:03: [SWA274] "Yeah, looks that way."

At about 16:50, a traffic watch aircraft informs the tower that they're heading toward the fire to the west of the airport.

On NORCAL Departure:

13:20: [68FS] "Hey what are those explosions over by SFO and the big fire?  Do you guys know about that?"
13:27: [NORCAL] "That's the first I have heard about it.  Near San Francisco Airport, you said?  Looks like some explosions?"
13:35: [68FS] "It's huge.  We can see it clear over here [I think they were near Oakland].  Six fireballs and, ah, smoke coming up.  It's just to the, ah, ea-, west side."
13:45: [NORCAL] "Okay, we'll check on that, thanks."
13:47: [68FS] "I mean, it's the biggest flames I've ever seen."

Since the NORCAL Departure feed gets multiple TRACON frequencies (notably 120.9 and 135.1), you can later hear another NORCAL controller ask about the fire, and multiple aircraft confirm that they can see it.  The first NORCAL controller calls back 68FS and tells him that there's a fire near "Lake Merritt" (that's what it sounds like).  However, Lake Merritt is in Oakland, so he might have meant Lake Merced, which is in SF.  However, the fire was actually near San Andreas Lake.

I find it interesting that, even though it wasn't a plane, the US NTSB is still in charge of the investigation, since they also investigate pipeline accidents.

[davisdog]

Although you wont hear it on the ATC Channels, the SFO Airport Crash Trucks were dispatched as Mutual Aid to the fire...you can hear on the police freqs how they were trying to close down San Bruno Ave so the Crash Truck(s) could make it up the hill from SFO.  It took at least 30min for the on scene Emergency crews to determine that an airplane wasn't what was causing the fireball (you can hear them trying to confirm if anybody could find (or see) a fusage.  Amazing what a busted 30" High Pressure gas main can do.

If anybody wants to hear more of the Fire/Police dispatch, this website has alot of it
http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?ctid=223

The San Mateo County Fire and CAL FIRE feed has the local response on the left channel, and state on the right
The San Mateo County Law Enforcement feed has all local and County Police.

If you play the feed you'll see an Icon to go into the Archives, everything starts about 6:10pm on 9/9.  The scanner was bouncing all over the place because of all the Freqs (and it also covers a large swath of the bay area), but you can get a good feel for the response.

[joeyb747]

"SAN BRUNO, Calif. — An ominous theme has emerged from the wreckage of a deadly pipeline explosion in California: There are thousands of pipes just like it nationwide."

From:

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-national/20100913/US.Pipeline.Explosion/