... When the power was cut to the control station in Milpitas, a system set up by PG&E automatically increased pressure on all three Peninsula pipelines, including the one coursing through San Bruno, according to PG&E employees interviewed by the safety board. The federal agency is investigating what caused the explosion.
Through it all, operators in the San Francisco control room proved powerless to fix the problem.
"We're screwed, we're screwed," one operator said minutes before the 30-inch gas transmission line exploded.
From your article:
Unbeknownst to PG&E, the 1956 pipeline in San Bruno was vulnerable to rupture because of a poorly constructed weld on a longitudinal seam. The federal safety board’s chairwoman has raised the possibility that PG&E set the line’s maximum safe level too high because the company was unaware the pipe had such seams.
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I don’t think software and programming is going to cause 60 year old weak welds.