Huge gas storage tanks containing up to 25 million gallons of highly flammable butane are perched on a hillside — near homes, schools and shopping areas — in the Southern California port community of San Pedro.
As the Los Angeles Times reports, the tanks make up one of the nation’s largest and oldest above-ground fuel storage sites. But amid recent disasters, including the deadly gas pipeline explosion last year in the San Francisco Bay Area community of San Bruno, some residents are increasingly on edge about the potential hazards at the 20-acre complex.
“We live with the misconception that government and private companies are looking out for public safety. Look at San Bruno, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and what Hurricane Katrina did to the levees in New Orleans,” said an activist with one of the homeowners groups in the area. “These tanks need to be moved immediately.”
The worries have been elevated by recent evaluations that the potential risks are worse that previously realized. A consulting firm hired by community residents concluded last year that, in a major catastrophe, significant damage could extend as far as 6.8 miles from the site, including part of the downtown area in the nearby City of Long Beach.
In addition, a doctoral candidate from the University of Southern California completed a study that concluded that a successful terrorist attack could produce a fireball 1,085 yards across that would kill 2,500 people, injure 12,500, and devastate the Port of Los Angeles. His worst-case scenario assumed an attack with rocket-propelled grenades — a model based on a foiled 1999 plot by a militia group that targeted a propane storage site in Elk Grove, Calif.
The San Pedro complex’s owner, Rancho LPG Holdings, says the 80-foot-tall tanks are well-maintained and equipped with an array of safety measures. Although the company’s consultants say a worst-case disaster could damage areas as far as a half-mile away, a zone that includes homes and busy shopping areas, it disputes the findings by the residents’ consultants and by the graduate student.
Likewise, the Environmental Protection Agency says the fears have been overstated, citing safety features at the storage complex that would prevent the worst type of explosion.
Still, residents, school officials and city officials in nearby Rancho Palos Verdes have pressed local and state agencies — unsuccessfully thus far — to seek a court-supervised assessment of the installation’s safety.
STUART SILVERSTEIN
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