Gas Pockets and Metro Rail

When you look down its busy, business-lined streets, it’s easy to forget that the entire mid-Wilshire area is located over an old oil field, a huge reservoir area with partially drained pockets of oil and gas, once topped by hundreds of wells. When a well is considered dry, some petroleum products still remain, unreachable. Sometimes the pocket collapses or is filled by groundwater, and sometimes not.

Consider the proximity of the La Brea tar pits, another geological remnant of earlier, more petrol times. I remember when the Ohrbachs department store building was built on land previously thought unbuildable. It was miraculous, because the building was planned to float on the existing pool of oil.

The recent methane-gas explosion and venting at 3rd and Fairfax is a tragic reminder that man really has no control over Mother Nature. Since first hearing of the Metro Rail proposal, I have believed that not only is it unreasonably expensive for a mere 18 miles of track, but also the dangers inherent in a subsurface structure in such an area would make the subway unsafe. The entire area is unstable and full of potential hazards!

It was disturbing to see that James E. Crawley, director of engineering transit facilities for the Southern California Rapid Transit District, maintains that Metro Rail plans will not even be reevaulated in light of the explosion (Times, March 26), “Fairfax Disaster Recalls Heyday of Los Angeles Oil Drilling Boom.”

Your article points out the added expenses of extra ventilation and other precautions already built into the plan because of the recognized danger.

Metro Rail money should be spent on a more sensible, more feasible project. The same money could serve a much greater area of Los Angeles were it used for light-rail mass transit. To concentrate all those funds into one 18-mile stretch, ignoring the transportation needs of the vast urban sprawl that is Los Angeles and its suburbs, is clearly a myopic plan.

If any good can come from such a disaster, it should be to avert future similar disasters. I sincerely hope that the future of the Metro Rail project went up in the explosion!

KATHERINE MILLER

Los Angeles