Supervisors press DBI, PG&E and engineers over gas lines encased in grade beams; DBI promises audits and policy clarifications

San Francisco's Land Use & Transportation Committee held a lengthy hearing on May 17 to evaluate safety and quality-control concerns in the city's mandatory soft-story seismic retrofit program, with particular focus on gas lines that may have been encased in newly poured grade beams.

Chair Supervisor Myrna Melgar said the hearing was intended to evaluate whether construction and inspection practices under the retrofit program were safe and whether the public could have confidence in DBI's oversight. The session followed reporting and complaints filed with DBI and the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California.

DBI presentation: code, oversight, and the '7 layers'

Christine Gasparak, DBI assistant director, described how the retrofit program was designed to reduce collapse risk in older wood-frame buildings and noted that about one-third of completed soft-story projects included new grade beams. She said sleeving or wrapping gas lines that pass through a grade beam is allowed by code and provides a buffer zone that enables relative movement without imposing structural loads on the pipe. Gas lines from the street to the meter are PG&E property and jurisdiction; DBI enforces the portion after the meter.

Gas-safety protocols from PG&E

PG&E representatives described their procedures when notified of a potential encroachment (a gas line near or being covered by concrete): field review within roughly 2428 hours, a three-letter notice sequence to the customer, engineering review and relocation where necessary, and as a final resort temporary service shutoff. PG&E said it would work with DBI to identify and resolve problematic locations.

Experts and engineers: sleeving vs wrapping

Contractors and structural engineers who testified traced the issue back to 2017, when concerns were raised in a DBI subcommittee. Several practicing engineers and DBI's Board of Examiners said the code's intent is to ensure that a pipe never carries structural load; the standard solution is sleeving (a concentric sleeve that leaves a gap) but a properly executed compressible wrapping can, in some cases, provide equivalent protection. Experts cautioned wrapping must meet minimum thickness and installation quality to be equivalent to a sleeve.

DBI commitments and next steps

DBI acknowledged inspectors do not routinely record "sleeved" or "wrapped" in the inspection record; the department said it would audit the subset of projects that included new grade beams (an estimated one-third of soft-story projects), cross-reference with PG&E records, and confirm whether required documentation and inspections were completed. DBI committed to issuing an information sheet for contractors and engineers clarifying acceptable sleeving/wrapping methods and to evaluating whether photos should become a required part of inspection documentation. DBI said it would formalize follow-up processes with PG&E and provide a committee report in 90 days. Committee members signaled willingness to consider subpoenas or further oversight if audits do not provide satisfactory answers.

What the hearing did not do

The committee did not issue a determination of wrongdoing nor vote on regulatory changes at the hearing. Instead, it elicited technical testimony, identified gaps in recordkeeping, and secured commitments from DBI and PG&E to coordinate an audit and return with findings.