San Diego Fire

San Diego Fire-Rescue stations have received 80 multi-gas detectors, donated by San Diego Gas & Electric, to monitor the atmosphere when crews respond to calls at scenes where potentially volatile gases may be present.

In a one-year period from 2021 to 2022, Fire-Rescue answered about 1,400 natural gas-related calls across the city. A complaint about gas odor can quickly turn dangerous if firefighters don't have tools such as multi-gas detectors to assess the situation before SDG&E crews arrive.

"To be very rudimentary, right now our folks go into those emergencies and the only thing they have is their nose," said Fire Chief Colin Stowell of San Diego Fire-Rescue. "Now they can walk in with these detectors, sense if there is a rip there and start to alert the residents or call for additional resources to mitigate that emergency."

The 80 detectors will be distributed to vehicles at 52 Fire-Rescue stations throughout the city. Made by MPower, the handheld devices can measure the levels of oxygen, combustibles, carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds.

"It's not just sensing if it would be natural gas," Stowell said. "We know there are other dangers ... Any of those flammable gases, we certainly want to be aware of before we go into those environments."

Stowell said prior to the donation, Fire-Rescue had only a limited number of multi-gas detectors and unlike the new MPower devices, they were not state-of-the-art.

The donation in coordination with the San Diego Fire-Rescue Foundation amounted to about $80,000, which came from SDG&E shareholder funds, not ratepayer dollars.

"We know the tools that our (SDG&E crews) have when they show up on scene," said Kevin Geraghty, SDG&E's chief safety officer, "and I think learning that the folks that are often on scene before us didn't have that same tooling, we felt we had a responsibility to provide for their safety."