After the Aliso Canyon blowout volunteers organized, spoke out, got governor’s ear ...Middle East

When re-examining the response to the massive methane blowout at Aliso Canyon 10 years ago, don’t look in the obvious places for leaders who stepped into the breach.

What some Porter Ranch residents call their “local heroes” came from residents at nearby churches, housing association boards, and a small city neighborhood council that put on its big boy pants after the blowout occurred Oct. 23, 2015.

The folks in front of the microphones, shouting into bullhorns and holding press conferences were not the elected city, county, state or federal officials, but ordinary citizens.

Paula Cracium was president of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council on that day, a group that dealt with sidewalk cracks, street safety, traffic and other more mundane issues. That all changed when methane from the SoCal Gas underground storage wells in Aliso Canyon spewed 109,000 metric tons of the gas into the air for four months, causing nosebleeds, rashes and other conditions and displacing more than 20,000 people in the northern San Fernando Valley for months.

As president, Cracium began calling everyone she could from her office at Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch. She made contact with state and local officials and helped folks who needed to get out of the methane-filled air and find temporary housing, paid for by SoCal Gas.

She held dozens of news conferences, even getting up at 3 a.m. to call media outlets in Europe to spread the message that an industrial facility near homes is not just a San Fernando Valley problem, but one that every resident in the world should know about. No stone was left unturned.

“In the middle of a crisis you need as much attention to that crisis as you can. It speeds up the process,” Cracium said on Thursday, Oct. 2.

“You want the world to know: People need to be aware of the risks of having underground gas storage near homes. There had to be pressure applied from the outside,” she added. “The louder the noise is, the more support you get.”

One story illustrates that point and tells of the reach of Cracium, a self-described “bulldog” who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

She convinced then-Governor Jerry Brown, who was in Southern California visiting a mass shooting site in San Bernardino, to stop at Porter Ranch that evening. Brown came to the home of Pat Polk, another Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council member, where they gave him dinner and peppered him with demands.

The next day Brown signed an order declaring the community of Porter Ranch in a state of emergency. This helped make more resources available for affected residents and for strengthening the tubing and pipes in the underground methane storage wells.

Another loud noise erupted after Cracium and others from the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council convinced environmental activist Erin Brockovich to come and speak. The event drew up to 2,600 people and was held in the Shepherd of the Hills Church sanctuary.

David Balen, who later became president of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council, said the neighborhood council at first didn’t have a lot of information about the gas leak and relied on elected officials to update them. After the Brockovich meeting and neighborhood meetings, more residents and officials became aware of the problem, he said.

“Nobody in their right mind knew we were sitting on storage tanks to this magnitude,” he said on Sept. 22.  “Now everybody knows what is in their backyard.”

He said residents of Porter Ranch rose up and brought attention to the gas leak, which led to a $120 million settlement stemming from the largest release of methane in U.S. history. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl approved a consent decree between Southern California Gas Co. — which is responsible for the Aliso Canyon gas leak — and city, county and state officials. The settlement funded a long-term health study.

Balen, who recently returned as president of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council, said the council will be working with UCLA on the long-term health study of the community.

He also said he was integral in setting up air monitoring systems. Six monitoring stations in the area detect methane gas and the data is reported publicly 24 hours a day. “We got that started and it was a huge hurdle,” Balen said.

The community’s squeaky wheels and lawsuits led to SoCal Gas strengthening the underground gas field and air monitors. But after all their community organizing, they failed to shut down the facility. Instead, the gas company lowered the amount it can withdraw from the underground gas field to 68.6 billion cubic feet, down from the capacity of 86 billion before the disaster.

Touted as the technical advocate for the community, Porter Ranch resident Issam Najm, an environmental engineer specializing in water treatment, and former Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council president, used his expertise to inform the residents and the neighborhood council what was going on.

Though his goal was to shut down the facility, he fell short. But he has stayed involved. “We were very naive about what this field is and what it does,” he said. “There’s a gate and a road, but that’s all you see.”

Helen Ritenour and her husband had bought what they believed was their “forever home” in Porter Ranch about a mile from the gas fields. Shortly after the blowout, she noticed a strong gasoline smell in the air. “By very early November, I could smell it coming into our home, even with the windows and doors closed,” she said.

She was a new mother, so to be safe they spent seven months living in several hotels in Chatsworth and Burbank. She judiciously kept receipts for the gas company, so she could be reimbursed. She had headaches and brain fog, her husband had extreme nose bleeds, and their baby had unexplained rashes, she said. Today her son is 10 and has allergies and asthma.

“It was my first time as a mother. It was so stressful, I was extremely worried and I was crying every single day,” Ritenour remembered.

At first, many affected residents were angry at the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council, saying they mostly cared about real estate prices, Ritenour said. She relied on friends and neighbors posting on a Facebook group for information. That changed with Cracium and Najm, who spoke out and arranged resident meetings.

“When Najm became PRNC president, people like him stood up and spoke out,” Ritinour said. “There is no reward for it. It is not a paid gig. He is a stand up guy and for him we are so thankful.”

Najm began his advocacy when he started looking into documents filed with environmental agencies. While examining the lengthy permit filed with the South Coast Air Quality Management District, he read that the field was also leaking crude oil, which contains benzene and other carcinogenic chemicals.

“That really changed the game for me,” he said on Oct. 1. “The discovery of crude oil that was blowing out with the gas over the community.”

Najm called that a breach of trust between SoCalGas and the community. “It is withholding a critical piece of information from a community trying to figure out what the hell is going on. To me, that is when this company lost the right to be a good neighbor.”

SoCalGas said it is common for gas fields to also release some crude oil.

“The lesson here is that communities need to be vigilant about what industrial operations are going on around them. The assumptions you can rely on the city government to be understanding of what people’s concerns are is a mistake,” Najm said.

Another community leader, Matt Pakucko, started Save Porter Ranch, and some of those who remembered those early days credit him for speaking up for them.

“Lessons learned is those government agencies and most elected officials are not on our side, they take the side of corporations,” Pakucko said on Oct. 2.

He said the best way to get the truth about exposure to methane and toxic chemicals was using their independent researchers, some from universities, to present unbiased data.

Ritenour, who has since moved to Westlake Village, called those who advocated for the people during those first few years “a light” in the darkness.

“Just seeing those people fighting for you, going to those meetings, speaking on the news really helped,” she said.

Balen, who originally was on the Renaissance Homeowners Association, said he came back to the neighborhood council to help lead a more active board on this topic. He and others are planning a “Here and There Day” on October 23, the 10-year anniversary of the blowout, so the community stays informed.

After 10 years, he said many new homes have been built and the area is booming. He still lives in Porter Ranch, despite being displaced to Tarzana for six months.

“We have some of the best schools in all of Los Angeles. It is an amazing place to live. But in the back of our minds we are always concerned about another gas blowout,” Balen said.

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