Washington – A top federal safety official says she’s concerned about a rash of pipeline accidents across the country over the past year.
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National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman said Thursday it’s too soon to say whether the five accidents the board is investigating indicate widespread safety problems in the pipeline industry.
Hersman also told reporters at a media briefing that the board decided not to investigate several additional pipeline accidents because the current workload has strained the agency’s manpower.
NTSB official Steve Klejst said he has only four pipeline investigators in his office. He said it has been a decade since the board investigated a pipeline accident as serious as the one in September in San Bruno, Calif., in which a gas transmission line exploded. Eight people were killed.