Craig Galanti was leaving his home last Friday night, Oct. 11, with his wife and son after authorities issued mandatory evacuations for his Porter Ranch community during the Saddleridge fire.
He watched as a glow of flames from the blaze painted the horizon orange. He couldn’t help but have a sense of déjà vu. Nearly four years ago he was ordered to evacuate his home after a geyser of gas began releasing methane from the ground at the Aliso Canyon storage field. Just like in 2015, his family hadn’t received any notification about potential risks of a leaking well catching fire or exposure to hazardous levels of toxins.
Since that Friday, Galanti and many other residents in the northwest stretch of the San Fernando Valley have waited for news about how the blaze has affected their neighborhood. It’s here where a community still lives with the not-so-distant memory of the nation’s largest recorded natural gas leak that forced thousands from their homes in October 2015.
“I’m exceedingly concerned for my family and the community for the brush fire that is sweeping through the hillsides of the fully-charged gas storage facility,” Galanti said.
The Saddleridge fire started in Sylmar late on Oct. 10 and quickly raged toward Porter Ranch before it consumed more than 8,000 acres. A few days later, crews spotted flames at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field.
A relatively small fire, it was extinguished on Oct. 15. But the news about the blaze quickly sparked concerns among residents who live near the Aliso Canyon gas facility and for whom the 2015 disaster is still a fresh memory.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in a statement that several state, county and city agencies formed a group that was working on “identifying any risk mitigation process or requirements for the facility that may be required to reduce the risk for or to protect the surrounding community.”
The group is working “on assessing the source of the soil fire, determining if any soil contamination is present, determining if any remediation efforts are needed,” according to the statement.
Meanwhile, SoCal Gas, which owns the facility, said in a statement that there are no indications of damage to the gas company’s infrastructure or leaks at the facility. Monitoring equipment showed no signs of methane or other constituents that would indicate a natural gas leak, or air quality concerns, the utility said.
“Preliminary findings from the initial soil samples collected Monday indicate the presence of constituents typically associated with historic crude oil exploration activities at the site, and not the current natural gas storage field,” according to the company’s spokesman, Chris Gilbride. The facility is based on an old field that operated between the 1930s and 1970s.
Gilbride added the utility plans to evaluate the sample results and determine what, if any, site clean-up and remediation activities are needed, in accordance with applicable regulatory requirements. The situation, Gilbride wrote, does not pose a risk to public safety.
But the fire has dredged up deep-seated skepticism among some community members and critics in the area who are sounding familiar critiques and casting the blaze’s effect in the area in starker terms.
Matt Pakucko, the president of Save Porter Ranch, who evacuated his home back in 2015 during the blowout and again last week, said he had a hard time trusting the gas company’s statements.
“Whenever anything like that happens, I don’t want to be anywhere near that facility,” he said. “When SoCalGas says there’s no threat and everything is fine and there’s no danger to the public, remember that’s exactly what they said when the blowout happened, and look where we are. That’s the same thing the health department said, and look where we are. Thousands of people are sick.”
It’s not the first time residents are raising concerns about accountability surrounding the Aliso Canyon field.
In 2016, prosecutors form District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s office said the SoCal Gas failed to report the leak until three days after it’d happened on Oct. 23, 2015.
Since the gas leak, dozens of firefighters who helped Porter Ranch residents in the days following the blowout have filed a civil lawsuit against the utility, alleging the company knowingly exposed them to hazardous levels of toxins, including benzene and formaldehyde. The exposure caused them to suffer from nosebleeds and migraine headaches, they said. Some of them allege they’ve developed different types of cancer.
Firefighters were not given protective gear because during the leak and had no warning that they might be being exposed to toxic chemicals, according to the lawsuit.
Similarly, neither the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health nor SoCalGas recommended any safety measures, the suit said.
Loraine Lundquist, an activist who advocated for closing down Aliso Canyon and a candidate running for the Los Angeles City Council District 12 seat in a recent election, said she found it “concerning” that SoCal Gas failed to notify the community about potential risks associated with the fire.
“SoCalGas said they didn’t know what was causing (the flame) and yet they were trying to provide assurances it was perfectly safe,” she said. “It feels like the blowout when they were issuing false assurances.”
The fire also renewed calls to close the facility. Activists held a rally Thursday night in downtown L.A. calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom to issue an executive order to close the site.
Still, Galanti said as someone who lived about 2,000 feet from the gas facility, he hoped the field would be decommissioned.
“Our regulators should close it,” he said, “because it’s too close to a populated area to be emitting this sort of dangerous toxins.”
