The cough doesn’t follow a pattern.
A dry, sudden hack that catches Gabriel Khanlian in the middle of a conversation, while cooking dinner, or sitting quietly at home in Porter Ranch.
“We call it the ‘Aliso Canyon Cough.’” Khanlian said Oct. 3. “ You’ll be surprised how many of us have that same cough in Porter Ranch and it’ll never go away. … It all started from those days when we were all exposed and we still don’t know what’s in our bodies.”
In October 2015, nearly 109,000 metric tons of methane spewed from a well at the Aliso Canyon storage facility, forcing thousands of families to evacuate. Schools shut down. Neighborhoods emptied. People fell ill with headaches, rashes, nausea, and a sense that something invisible and dangerous was all around them.
Ten years later, many Porter Ranch families are still reckoning with what it did to their health, their homes, and each other. Some said the experience pulled them closer. Others described strain, trauma and a deep distrust in the systems meant to protect them. While the state and county have launched long-term health studies and debated the site’s future, families said the damage is still unfolding.
For Khanlian, the memories are never far.
He lives a quarter-mile from SS-25, the well at the center of the disaster. He still remembers the day it all began, a strange scent that hung in the air and refused to leave.
“The first time we smelled (it), we were like, ‘Okay, maybe somebody has a gas leak around the area,’ but the smell came,” Khanlian said.
He recalled the gas cloud brought with it headaches, health issues and panic. His then two-year-old daughter “had rashes all over her body, hives all over her body,” Khanlian recalled.
His older sons, ages 5 and 7 at the time, were also kept indoors. The family couldn’t use their pool for months, and the kids couldn’t bike or play outside. Their school, less than a mile from their house, shut down because of the blowout.
And beneath it all, the constant fear of explosions crept into every corner of their lives.
“ The scare of being blown up was always there,” Khanlian said. “Imagine turning on the gas in your house, and without the pilot on — and just sitting in a room, it’s almost like a gas chamber, just nonstop smelling natural gas and mercaptan” — a rotten-egg smell added to odorless gases like natural gas as a safety measure to help detect leaks.
Like many families, they packed their things and temporarily relocated, renting a house in Reseda for two months. The Southern California Gas Company (SoCal Gas), the utility company that owns and manages the Aliso Canyon storage facility, reimbursed the rental costs, he said.
The move gave the family a break from the fumes, but not from the uncertainty.
“Everyone was scared,” Khanlian said. “We didn’t know what was going to happen. We didn’t know if we were ever going back home again. It was one of those feelings where you don’t know if you’re going to get back to your normal life, and that’s a very uneasy feeling right there.”
Just a few miles away, Patty Crost Glueck was doing her best to keep life moving, even as the crisis unfolded around her.
Glueck didn’t feel the effects right away, not like the people who lived closer to the well. But when the wind shifted, she said, the smell would reach their neighborhood too. “It was awful,” she said.
It wasn’t until Thanksgiving, when her family took a road trip to Northern California, that she realized how much the air back home had been affecting her.
“I noticed that I was feeling so much better than when we had left,” she said Oct. 3. “And it was like having a major hay fever attack, just the kind of drugginess and the feeling. When I was away for a few days, I felt a bit better.”
But when she returned home, the symptoms crept back, and something felt wrong.
Glueck remembered a strange metallic taste in her mouth, something she later learned wasn’t uncommon. Others in the neighborhood had reported the same sensation.
They didn’t know what was causing it, she said. But later, residents found out that the gas leak had released a mix of chemicals, including heavy metals and BTEX compounds — a group of hazardous pollutants made up of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, which are known to cause health problems with prolonged exposure.
Though her home sat below the 118 Freeway and outside the immediate blast zone, Glueck believed people across the northwest Valley were exposed to more than they realized. Studies at the time suggested emissions spread as far as 11 miles.
The effects, she said, rippled through the community. A friend’s dog fell ill and later died, prompting that neighbor to leave the area for good, relocating to Big Bear.
Glueck developed chronic bronchitis. Other family members also experienced health issues, though she declined to go into detail out of respect for their privacy.
She wasn’t alone. Many residents in Porter Ranch expressed similar concerns, and similar doubts about what they were breathing in.
“We were in the toxic soup for two solid months. Children, wife, dog, and just a constant blanket of toxins and stress,” said Craig Galanti, another longtime resident.
At first, his family stayed put, spending Thanksgiving and Christmas at home. But anxiety began to take hold as the days dragged on without answers.
“It was terrible,” he said Oct. 6. “We were incredibly anxious because no one’s saying when this thing’s going to get stopped.”
It wasn’t until early the following year, Galanti said, that they began to learn what had actually been released into the air.
“We didn’t learn about what was really in the air until January, February,” he said. “ We’re being showered by crude oil, toxins in the air, and then nobody was talking about the particular matter and the heavy metals, the barium magnesium and other heavy metals that were in the air. Nobody was talking about that until later.”
By then, Galanti had decided to move his family out, a choice he wishes he had made sooner. Ultimately, they spent six months living in Tarzana.
The stress of the experience, he said, rippled through his family.
“Stress is always either it’s the glue or it’s the wedge and it takes its turn,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a way to bring (family members) together, because you’re trying to solve a stressful situation that impacts everyone. And other times it becomes a wedge or a dividing point because everybody kind of grieves or suffers a little differently than the other. And it can create enormous tension.”
That tension, and the uncertainty it bred, became a turning point for many in the neighborhood.
In the years since the blowout, all three residents have found themselves more deeply engaged in their community.
Galanti and Glueck both sit on the Community Advisory Group for the Aliso Canyon Disaster Health Research Study — an effort led by UCLA and Los Angeles County Public Health to examine the short- and long-term health effects of the gas leak.
The $119.5 million settlement between SoCal Gas and state and local agencies in 2019 included $25 million to fund the study. Through the advisory group, residents have a formal role in raising concerns, informing the community, and providing feedback to the Department of Public Health and the scientific experts overseeing the research.
Khanlian, who still lives near the well, became actively involved with the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council and eventually took on the role of president — a position he has since stepped away from. Each has pressed for greater transparency, stronger safety protocols, and long-term health protections.
But concerns remain — especially about what would happen if another disaster struck.
“There is no valve at the base of each one of these wells, and there are 113 or so active and inactive wells,” Galanti said. “So if an earthquake severed three of these, two of these, eight of these, 15 of these — what happened in 2015 would be dwarfed significantly by a multi-well breach.”
Khanlian still runs air purifiers in his home, something he began during the blowout. Even now, he said, he sometimes notices a familiar, faint scent in the air — the telltale odor of mercaptan, the sulfur-like chemical added to natural gas to alert people to leaks.
“They capped it off and we still smell it. And, now they cover the smell up with flowery smell… When I go outside at night, sometimes it smells like random flowers. … It smells a lot better than mercaptan, that’s for sure,” he said, “but it’s still toxic air that you shouldn’t be breathing in.”
In a statement on Oct. 9, a SoCal Gas spokesperson said the company has implemented “multiple safety layers” at the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility over the past decade. These include installing new steel tubing inside every operating well and using it as the only path for moving gas in or out.
The casing around the tubing, which serves as a backup barrier to prevent leaks, was also tested for safety, SoCal Gas said.
The company also said it is operating the facility at reduced pressure, required by the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Geologic Energy Management Division.
Additional measures include real time pressure monitoring of all wells –– a tool that can help detect sudden changes that may indicate a potential leak, as well as visual inspections of each well four times a day. The utility also uses technology to provide real time 24-7 data on methane levels in the area.
SoCalGas also pointed to community engagement efforts after the blowout, including the Community Advisory Council, a forum for residents to raise concerns and receive updates. It also created an internal safety committee under the 2019 settlement with local and state agencies that meet regularly to review well operations at Aliso Canyon facility.
“Over the past 10 years, SoCal Gas has conducted comprehensive safety reviews and implemented multiple safety layers that protect one of California’s most important assets for energy reliability and affordability,” the spokesperson said. “All operating wells continue to pass all the rigorous integrity testing requirements and are approved for use by the California Geologic Energy Management Division.”
In response to residents’ concerns about ongoing odors, the spokesperson said that during maintenance activities, small amounts of gas can sometimes be released from equipment aboveground, which may cause temporary spikes in gas level.
SoCalGas said it uses infrared sensors along the southern edge of the Aliso Canyon site to track methane around the clock. If readings stay at or above 8 parts per million for 20 minutes or more, technicians are sent out to check with handheld detectors. The spokesperson encouraged residents who believe they smell gas to call SoCalGas at 1-800-427-2200 or 911 immediately.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said it had not received any recent complaints related to Aliso Canyon, but noted that the South Coast AQMD and state regulators such the California Geologic Energy Management Division oversee chemical levels and reporting.
SoCalGas also pointed to conclusions from regulatory agencies including the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, and South Coast Air Quality Management District that found no evidence of long-term health risks from the blowout.
Still, many residents said symptoms persist, and they remain skeptical of those conclusions.
The lingering uncertainty continues to shapes how families think about the future.
Glueck said she and her husband, both retired, had once considered renting out their home, an option they ultimately ruled out.
“We didn’t want to expose anyone else to living in the area, if we can help it,” she said.
Khanlian said his family has been quietly looking at homes outside Porter Ranch. With one child now in college, moving would be easier.
Still, the weight of what happened has changed how they see each other — and what matters most.
“It brought the family closer based on the fact that we started worrying about each other a lot more than just having a daily life,” he said.
Khanlian still remembers the rashes on his daughter’s skin. The protests. The canceled school days. The way his young sons looked to him for answers he didn’t have.
A decade later, that fear hasn’t gone away.
“I wonder what the effects are because we don’t know. Nobody’s really told us what the long-term effects are,” he said. “Are we all going to have cancer? We just don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows the answers to that question.”