Porter Ranch Tutors

About Porter Ranch

Porter Ranch tutors have been very interested in the effects of the heavily publicized Porter Ranch gas leak, which occurred in October 2013. This is still an ongoing problem with many of the local residents in litigation with the Southern California Gas Company seeking compensation for sickness brought on by exposure to the leaked gas.

Porter Ranch has been one of the more desirable and affluent neighborhoods in the northwest region of the San Fernando Valley. The area offers breathtaking views of the Santa Susana Mountains, which lie to the north. Ironically, new housing developments boasted the clean air as a big selling point to attract wealthy Los Angeles residents to relocate to the area. The topography, with the aforementioned mountains leads to bursts of wind that bring in fresh air, considered a rarity in the densely ‘smogged’ city of Los Angeles. The large amount of greenery, parks and mountain views were supposed to give a Porter Ranch resident the feeling of being much farther removed from the hubbub of the busy city than it’s zip code stipulated. Porter Ranch tutors note that many residents were completely unaware that they were sitting on top of one of the US’s biggest natural gas storage facilities, when they bought their homes and moved into the area.

In it’s natural form gas has no noticeable smell. As a precaution gas is mixed with tert-butylthiol, an odorant that gives gas that rotten egg smell. Local residents began noticing this smell, which soon became overpowering as the leak spewed out thousands of pounds of methane per hour. Porter Ranch tutors note that this outpour of gas into the atmosphere was responsible for a quarter of California’s gas emissions in 2015. It took until mid February 2016 before an announcement was made that this specific leak had been plugged.

Of course the Porter Ranch methane gas blowout was never supposed to happen, yet as gas leaks continue to appear it would seem that they are inevitable despite all of the safety measures that are put in place. Many of the residents forced to relocate due to the original leak have migrated from the area for good. This exodus from the area has significantly reduced house prices, and residents have suffered financially as well as physically from the disaster. The main concern for residents who inhaled the noxious gas that contained metals including barium are health concerns. It is unclear what kinds of health effects both short and long term this leak will have had on Porter Ranch’s population.