It’s been several years since there have been high-profile PG&E gas line fires in The Bay Area. The San Bruno disaster happened in 2010, and a street went on fire in Oakland due to a gas line eruption in December 2013. And a natural gas pipeline in Fresno exploded in 2015, injuring eleven people.
San Francisco has fortunately not been the site of a similar fire recently. However, the gas lines do run underground in the city, and it’s important to be aware of their locations as part of your due diligence when buying a home. You can easily consult the pipeline map on PG&E’s Web site. Just click on the map, and zoom in on San Francisco until you can see the actual street names and gas lines. You can also type in a property address to see which lines are potentially nearby.
The upshot is that most of the lines run throughout the southeast portion of the city. This includes:
– in and around Potrero, Dogpatch, Bayview, and Visitacion Valley
– through Bernal Heights along Folsom
– along the thoroughfares of Alemany, Cesar Chavez, Bayshore Boulevard.
There don’t appear to be any gas lines running elsewhere in San Francisco.