There are many ways to look at this of course depending upon your point of view.
On one level this will save many many lives in the county just because the natural gas infrastructure isn't being maintained properly for safety ANYWHERE in the U.S. now simply because of this trend. So, one way to look at it is that there will be less homes blowing up (like you see all the time in the news around the country) from gas infrastructure of various kinds failing and catching fire and blowing up homes and people.
This is a different cause completely but I had friends in North Carolina who died because a mud slide severed their gas line to their home. It was a nice home and so had an automatic gasoline generator that would come on when the power went out. This is what killed them both the husband and wife.
Because they shut off the gas as best they could as homeowners and they shut off the power to the house to prevent sparks from igniting any gas in the air or in or near the home. However, then the automatic gasoline powered generator automatically came on and the sparks from this blew their house up and killed them both.
Because of this, if you have gas at all in your home or business you really do not want your gasoline generator coming on automatically or you might be in the same situation one day. IF you have natural gas for anything in your home or business you REALLY do not want this generator to come on automatically. It's better that it's a manual turn switch so you can control it if you have gas in your home or business.
So, from this story you can see how one family died from Natural gas during a mud slide.
But, I actually have natural gas at my house up near San Francisco and I find it to be useful because of 100 mph storms coming off the ocean usually sometime between January and March of most years which blew down about 100 pine trees on a golf course nearby us a few years ago now.
Having natural gas at that house allows us to be able to cook even when the power is out in that area on the coast of California. I would say on average the power is out from 1 to 5 days at a time once or twice a year there from storms and wind off the ocean. IN fact I have personally seen 35 foot waves from storms within 5 miles of where I live and what is interesting about that is that surfers often come out who are big wave surfers with their jet skis to surf these waves so they get their speed up by being towed by the jet skis and then jet skis pick them up before they crash into the rocks too near the end of their rides on 35 foot waves. It's pretty amazing to watch from the shore by the way!
But, there is no way at all of predicting where and when any of this will happen because it is completely at random depending upon the year and the ferocity of the storm and direction of the storm when it hits the shore and the way the waves break in that storm.
Also, we had our own difficult experience in Santa Barbara with this. The Gas company said they had detected a gas leak at our Santa Barbara home. Luckily, it was determined that the leak was coming up through the ground in the 200 feet gas line from the street underground. They use Hydrogen for some reason to find where the leaks are by running it through the gas pipes (not sure why they do this). They found that the leaks were in the pipe before it got to the house.
But then, we found out to return gas service was going to be 16,000 to 20,000 dollars to pay for from the street. Then we found out that no gas appliances can be newly connected or reconnected in Santa Barbara county.
However, we were planning already to put in Solar arrays on the roof of this house anyway. So, we decided to change over to an all electric home because this will in the long run save us a lot of money on power consumption which for us will be a reduction by 84% of our electric bill every month by going solar in Santa Barbara where it is sunny enough to do this.
So, we saved ourselves 16,000 to 20,000 dollars in not reconnecting our gas line and by going to an all electric home there.
But, this was kind of hard on my daughter and husband because their stove and hot water heater were both Gas. So, my daughter found an electrician to help them on a Sunday which made it much less time before they had a hot water heater installed that was electric instead of gas. They found they could cook on an outdoor Bar B Que grill that had it's own gas supply rather than on stove which had no gas indoors. So, by using solar heated water showers from the sun they were able to make the transition within a few weeks to an all electric home. So, it was inconvenient for them but it was in the long run the best solution.
So, if you are thinking of going solar it might be useful to go to an all electric home in preparation for this change.
This way you don't have to accidentally have your home or business blown up in a gas infrastructure accident!
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