Four Years After Pipeline Explosion, San Bruno Neighborhood Still Rebuilding
SAN BRUNO (CBS SF) -- Four years after a pipeline explosion tore through San Bruno's Crestmoor neighborhood, the area is still rebuilding.
The potential for even more construction has neighbors nearing the point of exhaustion.
"It absolutely was a traumatic experience," said Dr. Debra Marks, a psychologist and San Bruno resident. "I was home at the time of the explosion. The ground shaking, the house moving."
MORE: Complete San Bruno Pipeline Explosion Coverage
Marks lived through the blast and now she and her neighbors are living through some serious construction fatigue.
"We are all -- and I think I can speak for everyone there -- very tired of what's gone on because it's not over," she said.
There are still about 10 vacant lots yet to be rebuilt and the roads are a mess.
"It's never gonna end," said San Bruno resident Maria Orrante. "It'll never end."
The major infrastructure work beneath the roads will likely go on for at least another year.
"Right now, I think everyone is learning to deal with it," Orrante said.
There could be even more construction on the horizon. A proposed development, just two blocks away from the blast site, would replace a church with more than two dozen homes.
"You can't imagine that," Orrante said. "Up there -- in that little spot? You can't imagine it."
But while that development is just a proposal, neighbors say all the noise and house-shaking construction work builds on painful memories.
"Everything that goes on in the neighborhood can be a potential trigger for that original trauma," Marks said. "It would be real nice to have a break, a pause, before any more construction or development occurs."
Four years after the explosion, the Crestmoor neighborhood is still rebuilding and trying to find a way past a disaster that will never go away.
"Like my dad said, it's progress," Orrante said. "What are you going to do? You have to keep living -- and go around it. That's what we're going to have to do."
On Wednesday, KPIX 5 spoke off camera with the mayor and city manager of San Bruno. They say the proposal is still in the very early stages -- so early that they can't yet comment on it.
But they did say they everything will be taken into consideration before anything is approved.
