Balboa Gas Line Rupture, “Up Close and Personal”
THE NORTHRIDGE EARTHQUAKE
My home is located on Balboa Boulevard in Granada Hills, approximately 150 feet from the site of the ignition of product from a 20-inch natural gas feeder main and the rupture of a 56-inch water feeder main. At home with me at the time of the earthquake were my 24-year-old son, Christian, and his girlfriend, Audrey Ritter. To say that the three of us were humbled by Nature’s force that morning would be quite an understatement. We know we’re lucky to be alive after experiencing simultaneously an earthquake, a fire, and a flood.
Like almost everyone in the San Fernando Valley, when the quake hit, 1 literally was thrown from bed and deposited, barefoot, on a floor covered with broken glass and fallen objects.
After seeing that Audrey and Christian were okay, 1 began to stumble around my dark house, puzzled by a roar 1 could hear outside. Momentarily, 1 realized what the noise was, as 1 found myself ankle-deep in water in my living room. Peering out my living room window, 1 could see a geyser of water, probably 50 feet high, spouting from the street about 150 feet north of my house. Balboa Boulevard itself looked like a river running south past my home-with water extending at least six inches up onto the walls of homes on both sides of the street.
GAS EXPLOSION
It’s odd how one can completely lose track of time after a frantic situation; but that, I guess, is what happened to me. As well as l can recall, it must have been about a half hour after the earthquake that the gas explosion occurred. As I was rummaging through my bedroom trying to lift valuables out of the water, there suddenly was a deafening roar-and instant daylight.
Christian, who had been looking out of his bedroom window, turned in terror and screamed. “Oh, God…Dad, 1 just saw a guy fry out there in his truck.” Looking out my son’s window, all 1 could see was the bottom portion of a fireball that had to be several hundred feet high…and that burning truck, which was almost directly in front of our home. (Christian actually had been watching as the driver of the stalled truck had attempted to restart it over and over again-its ignition finally sparking the explosion. The driver fortunately was not fatally injured.) “Get the cats and let’s get out.” 1 told Audrey and Christian
NEIGHBORS’ HOMES
While they loaded our pets into our two cars and moved the cars to a safer place down the alley behind the house, I ran to help my neighbor to the north. Chuck Partlow, whose home was directly in front of the fireball, and which already was beginning to burn.
Chuck’s family, 1 found, already had safely left his house, crossed the alley, and gone through a rear neighbor’s yard to the next street east. Chuck himself, though, stood knee-deep in the water pouring through the alley, staring at his home. As I approached him. his words, as I recall, were, “It’s gone. Kevin. Isn’t it? My house is lost.”
Chuck was right, and I told him so; but I knew we could save his boat and motor home, and l told him that, too.
“Let’s go find Phil first,” I said. Chuck and I then ran to my neighbor’s home to the south and found that all was okay with Phil Herrera and his family.
Returning to Chuck’s rear yard, we quickly hooked up his boat to his truck and, as Chuck drove them off, I jumped into his motor home and was able to get it out and away.
PREPARING TO EVACUATE
By the time I returned to the rear of my home. Chuck’s house was almost fully involved; the radiant heat from the fireball was so intense that just standing in the alley 300 feet away was almost unbearable.
“Let’s get my file cabinet.” I told Christian, as he ran up to me. My son and 1 then reentered our home and carried out the cabinet containing all of my important papers.
“We have to go find ‘Momma,’ ” Christian said as we carried the cabinet into a neighbor’s yard. We had been unable to find Momma, one of our three cats. Christian wanted to go back and get her. I told him we would not go back in. Though I knew we had time to look, I feared losing track of my son in the house during the search.
High-voltage wires above the alley were beginning to smolder, so I told Christian and Audrey that we had to move down the alley, out of the water, and away from the intense heat. Two houses south, we joined Phil Herrera in the driveway of his home.
Phil is one of those persons who spends countless hours of his off time working in and around his house. Needless to say, he was more than distraught. With tears streaming clown his face. I’lliI embraced me and cried. “Kevin, you’re a fireman; you know….What’s going to happen to our houses?”
(Photos by Glenn P. Corbett.)
“Phil, your family’s okay, right?” I answered. “That’s what matters-the houses are gone.”
Now. strange things happen at strange times, but what happened next was not only strange, it offered both of us a bit of relief at a moment of despair. As we stood on the “shoreline” of our alleyturned-to-river. I looked down and saw a fish flopping at the edge. Reaching down, I picked it up. turned to Phil, and said, “Don’t worry. Phil. All’s gonna be okay. It’s my lucky day. I already caught a fish.”
“That’s one of my koi,” he screamed, and a bit of a smile appeared on his face.
ENGINE COMPANY APPEARS
At about this time. 1 told Christian I was going to walk up the alley as far as I could and take a last look at our house. It just then really struck me that we would lose it, and I was feeling a bit of sadness myself. As 1 edged closer to the house. I saw that an engine company had appeared and stopped at the end of our alley, approximately 600 feet to the north.
“Go get ’em, Kevin,” I heard Phil screaming in the background. Running up the alley, I contacted Captain Ron Jackson of Engine 74. I told him that I was an LAFD inspector, that my home was the exposure to the south, and that I had a swimming pool and a noncombustible roof.
Emphasizing that he was making no promises, Jackson had the engine proceed southward, down the alley, as he evaluated the state of the highvoltage wires above and the water below. As Engine 74 moved slowly toward my home, Firefighter Ron Marcione and I cleared a path for the rig, throwing what remained of brick and block walls out of the way.
After Engine 74 had been positioned in the alley behind my driveway, all of us went to work. A siphon ejector was put into operation, using my pool as the water source. Oneinch lines were pulled into position at the northeast and southwest corners of my home.
Wearing an extra turnout coat and firefighting hood I found on the rig, I entered my house with Jackson. Moving quickly to the north rooms, Jackson pulled ceilings as I began to douse flames through those holes and the attic access with a water pressure extinguisher.
Marcione manned the hoseline we had snaked through the rear door and out onto my front porch. Directly exposed to the radiant heat of the fireball, Marcione protected himself behind trees and bushes that he was able to extinguish. He protected the exposed west side of my home, directing his hose stream, alternately, under the eaves onto the burning yard and even onto burning 100-foot palm trees in the yard of the home to the south of mine.
Firefighter Scott Ames manned the hoseline at the northeast comer of my home. He took a beating the likes of which I’ve never seen in my 22 years in the department. Using a fourby four-foot piece of thick plywood found in my garage by Engineer Dan Arnold as a heavy shield, Ames carried it, as well as the hoseline, in front of him as he made successive trips under the exposed eaves along the north wall of my home.
As far as I’m concerned, Arnold’s actions were no less heroic than those of the firefighters already mentioned. With his rig positioned in a river of water and exposed to enough radiant heat that the rig was damaged, Arnold took much of the responsibility for the safety of all involved by his vigilance in monitoring the state of the highvoltage wires above and near his rig-ready to “cut and run” if he deemed it necessary. When Arnold was able to break away from the panel, he secured the plywood barrier for Ames and carried it off and on for Ames whenever he could.
Jackson’s actions at the incident at my house presented a “command performance” that anyone in the fire service would recognize as exemplary. After pulling ceilings for me on the interior, Jackson returned to the exterior rear of my house, where he con stantly monitored the safety of all bystanders and firefighters. Ilis actions included directing and monitoring a “bucket brigade”-type operation at a two-story home three houses north of mine a home still standing, thanks to those residents and Jack son’s resourcefulness.
While Engine 74’s firefighting operations were continuing at my home, a similar scenario was being played out behind homes across Balboa Boulevard (on the west side), where Engines 8 and 18 were involved in a firelight that eventually consumed three homes. Engine 8 had found a pool as a water source, and those companies saved exposed homes north and south of the three that were lost.
Firefighting operations at the Balboa Boulevard incident lasted approximately two hours-until the time the broken gas line was turned down to a point where it no longer presented a hazard to adjacent homes. Three single engine companies held losses in my neighborhood to only five homes-an extraordinary “stop” at an incident that, in any other circumstances, would have been fought in our city by 10 times as many companies.
As 1 sit here at home writing this article some months after the earthquake, I can look out my front window and still see what friends have called “the war zone.” 1 can see the vacant lots, the blackened 100-foot palm trees, and the freestanding chimneys’ in the middle of the rubble.
Regardless…know what? The view makes me smile with tears in my eyes. It reminds me of how lucky I am. My family and friends are okay. Christian found “Momma.” The rest of my neighbor Phil’s koi are alive and fat, swimming in what’s left of my algae-filled swimming pool.
It’s like I told Phil when I caught one of his fish that day; “January 17th was my lucky day, second only to the day I joined the fire service.”
