Los Angeles Residents Flee as Gas Leak From Storage Field Threatens Neighborhood

摘要

The sulfurous scent of a natural-gas leak hangs in the air as mail carriers wearing gas masks make rounds to mostly deserted homes in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Porter Ranch. Life in the community of 30,000 people chiseled into the hills on the north rim of the San Fernando Valley has been upended by the break, which emits enough methane to fill the Empire State Building every day. San Diego-based Sempra Energy, which operates the fourth-largest underground storage field in the U.S. nearby, has said capping it could take two months. The leak in California, the state with the toughest U.S. restrictions on greenhouse-gas emissions, is bringing calls to tighten regulations on storage fields as the amount of natural gas held in underground reservoirs nationwide swelled 17 percent last year. Enforcement is left to states, with no overarching federal role. Leak-fueled explosions have flattened homes and businesses and killed people from New York to Kansas and Texas since 2001.