Three Dead; 53 Homes Destroyed In San Bruno Fireball
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At least three have died, 53 homes destroyed and more than 100 damaged in a massive fireball that erupted when a natural gas line broke in the San Bruno foothills and raced through a residential neighborhood, authorities said Friday.
While there were reports of additional casualties, San Bruno fire officials would only confirm to KTVU that three bodies have been recovered. Authorities planned to use cadaver dogs to launch a grim search for other victims once the area was secure and the rumble had cooled.
"It's going to take us until at least until tomorrow into the afternoon to do a full search," San Bruno Fire Chief Dennis Haag said late Thursday.
At ground zero of the explosion a massive crater bore witness to the power of the initial blast.
California Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, acting governor while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was in Asia on a trade mission, has declared a state of emergency for San Mateo County.
"It was like a bomb went off," Maldonado told CNN from the scene early Friday.
He said the cause of the conflagration was still unclear.
"We don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. Tomorrow morning we'll find out," he said.
Crews with search dogs will go through whole area, he said. "We'll try to find folks if there are folks in their homes."
Law enforcement officers were also patrolling the fire zone to protect homes from looters. Authorities said a man and a woman had been arrested overnight for stealing from homes.
The four-alarm conflagration, soaring several hundred feet into the air in a tornadic column of fire, started at about 6:15 p.m. at Skyline Boulevard and San Bruno Avenue, according to the battalion chief's office.
As of approximately 10:30 p.m. Cal Fire was reporting that the fire was 50% contained and that 10 acres total had burned. San Bruno city officials said at a news conference later Thursday night that fire crews were working to hold the fire, and the city's priority is the safety of those battling the blaze and those affected by the tragedy.
Haag said he was confident that crews would be able to continue holding the fire and that it would not consume more land or homes than what was already affected.
Haag said that a high-pressure gas line was likely to blame for the fire, but that the cause has yet to be confirmed.
The need to completely shut down gas lines is impeding firefighting efforts, Haag said, because those gas lines have residuals that need to be eliminated before crews can access the area for a search.
PG&E president Chris Johns said after the news conference that crews are currently working to stop the flow on the main gas transmission line and will then cut off flow through the distribution lines to individual homes.
Johns said that the company would "fully cooperate" with the investigation and explore unconfirmed witness reports of the smell of gas in the area before the explosions.
Without access to the gas lines, Johns said it was too early to speculate on the cause of the explosion, although he said PG&E was unaware of any of its crews working in the area this evening.
"It's a tragic event, and we really want to make sure that we can make this area safe right now," Johns said.
Johns vowed that if the investigation finds that PG&E is at fault, "We will do the right thing for those involved."
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Víctor Lei
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