2010 in review: Explosive losses, Giant victories

The top local stories of 2010 betray conventional wisdom.

Torture feels good. But only if you're a Giants fan.

The candidate who spends the most money does not win. Even if she is a billionaire.

And what happens when a mayoral candidate in Oakland receives the most first-place votes? He loses.

But the most unexpected story in 2010 was also the most tragic.

On Sept. 9, a gas line exploded and killed eight people in a suburban San Bruno neighborhood. It was a blast that continues to reverberate as experts and victims still seek to both discover the cause of the deadly event and ensure it doesn't happen again.

Chronicle reporters and editors have selected the top local stories of the year - news that changed the region and shook the lives of Bay Area residents.

1 San Bruno

At 6:11 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 9, residents in San Bruno's Crestmoor neighborhood heard a deafening explosion and saw the sky catch fire. The first thought was that an airplane from nearby San Francisco International Airport had crashed.

Instead, a 30-inch transmission gas line had exploded - a 56-year-old underground pipe that few residents knew lay beneath the street. As residents fled under a rain of debris, an inferno raged from a geyser of burning gas for nearly two hours before workers could shut down the pipeline.

Eight people were killed and 38 homes destroyed.

A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board found Pacific Gas and Electric Co. officials were unaware of the pipeline's welded seam, a startling finding that showed the utility's records were suspect.

"You figure it must be checked so carefully because it's so dangerous," resident Bill Magoolaghan told The Chronicle. "But then you find out, in reality, that it's not being checked carefully. And we have to pay for it with our lives and our skin and our houses."

2 Giants

Pick your moment. Edgar Renteria's home run ball as it cleared the fence in left-center field. The called strike three on a flummoxed Ryan Howard. The Machine's casual stroll through Brian Wilson's apartment.

For a few weeks in the fall, the city was gripped by baseball. High-fiving strangers in the streets on victorious nights seemed like the perfectly polite thing to do.

On that great evening in Texas when Tim Lincecum was hoisted onto his teammates' shoulders and pointed No. 1 to the dark sky, the torture, thank the heavens, was over.

3 Meg Whitman