BGE equipment did not conform to safety standards in Columbia gas explosion, PSC staff report finds
BGE equipment that supplied gas and electric service to a Columbia office building damaged in a gas explosion last year failed to meet safety standards under state and federal regulations, a state report concluded.
Service equipment failures that likely caused the August 2019 accident are considered safety violations, a division of the Public Service Commission of Maryland concluded in a report released late Monday.
The PSC report, by the agency’s engineering division and dated Aug. 6, was made public after a massive gas explosion Monday morning leveled three homes in Northwest Baltimore, killing two people and seriously injuring at least seven others.
“Based on the response and evidence submitted by BGE, Staff concludes that BGE failed to provide for safe operation and maintenance of the facilities,” the report said.
BGE, which said late Monday that the cause of the explosion in the Reisterstown Station neighborhood in the city remains unknown, also is still investigating the accident on Stanford Boulevard in Columbia. That explosion occurred on a Sunday morning when the building was unoccupied and did not result in injuries or fatalities.
BGE officials were working Tuesday to provide a response to the PSC findings.
The staff report, sent to the Public Service Commission with several recommendations, criticizes BGE for a lack of conclusions nearly a year later. It argues enough is known to show whether BGE complied with safety regulations.
“Currently almost a year after the accident, BGE is unable to provide a more detailed root cause analysis of what triggered the event or accurately estimate a date of completion at this time,” the report says.
The Columbia explosion occurred just before 8 a.m. on Aug. 25, 2019 in the Lakeside Office building in the 8800 block of Stanford Blvd. Other tenants in the roughly 40,000-square-foot, L-shaped building’s office and retail space included a Social Security office, an Indian grocery store, a nail salon, a coffee shop, a sushi restaurant and a pizzeria.
Staff at the PSC, which regulates utilities, is recommending that commissioners consider a civil penalty of $218,647 for a safety violation by a gas company. The commission, a five-member decision making body at the agency, now must consider what action to take.
Typically, the commission would solicit comments from parties and responses from BGE before making any additional findings or scheduling an evidentiary hearing.
The report said investigators found that multiple utility facilities in a “joint trench” were located near or crossing each other. An electrical fault in a BGE electrical service cable supplying the building was discovered while testing gas line pressure and several holes were found in the gas pipe.
Additional inspections showed locations where damage to the gas service appears to have occurred due to interaction with the electrical fault.
The report noted a similar accident on July 7, 1998, involving Washington Gas Light Co. in Loudoun County Virginia, in which an explosion and fire in a subdivision left one person dead and three injured. That case also involved a hole in a gas service line, the report noted. Virginia lawmakers approved a bill in 2000 requiring specific separations between electric and gas service underground utility lines, the report said.
“As demonstrated in the Loudoun County accident, inadequate separation of underground gas and electric services can result in a melt-through incident from an electric fault; similar to the accident that occurred at 8865 Stanford Boulevard,” the report said.
No federal regulations or national standards exist now that specifically address separation between electric and gas service underground utility lines, the report said.
But the National Electric Safety Code does address the separation of underground electric lines from other underground structures, including at time of construction, the report said.
And the federal Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration require gas operators, such as BGE, to follow certain procedures.
This story will be updated.
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