Family killed in San Bruno gas fire

Janessa Greig, 13, an honor student and student body president of St. Cecilia School in San Francisco, delivered the introduction to the school Mass.

That evening, the eighth-grader was killed along with her mother, Jacqueline, in a fire caused by a natural gas pipeline explosion that destroyed their home and dozens of others in San Bruno.

They were two of the four people killed in the inferno.

Janessa's father, James, and the Greigs' older daughter, Gabriela, a high school junior, were at a tennis match at the time at St. Ignatius College Preparatory. They stayed for back-to-school night.

Janessa came home so she could work on her schoolwork, and her mother was home from her job.

Janessa, who attended St. Cecilia for nine years, was the eighth-grader whom all the other students saw every day on closed-circuit TV giving the day's announcements.

"She always had a smile on her face," the nun-principal said. "She was very warm, outgoing and generous, respected by all the kids."

Jacqueline Greig, 44, was on the pastoral council. James Greig had served on the council before her. The family sat together weekly at 9:30 a.m. Mass.

"There was a hole on Sunday," said a Mother's Club member, whose family often sat behind the Greigs.

Jacqueline was quiet and effective on the pastoral council because "she really listened to people."