Central New York Injury Lawyer Blog

A house violently exploded in Whitesboro, Oneida County today, killing an elderly woman, and strewing house debris in all directions. Neighbors say they smelled gas before the explosion. State officials, and the National Grid, are investigating the cause of the explosion.

From my experience representing victims of house explosions caused by gas, including a 2005 house explosion in Oswego County that injured 9 and killed one resident, this appears to be a typical gas-fueled explosion. Gas explosions in homes are typically violent, demolishing the home and strewing debris many feet in all directions.

From a liability perspective, the gas provider, or those who installed the gas-fueled appliances, or, if the house is rented, the landlord, may be held liable for the explosion and resulting injuries or death. It all depends on what went wrong. Did the resident receive proper warnings about the smell of gas, what it meant and what to do? Was the gas-odor properly added and mixed into the gas? Where did the leak start, and how? Were the gas-fueled appliances installed correctly?

The only way to answer these questions, and thus to find the culpable party or parties, is through a thorough and early investigation by experienced experts. The evidence gets "cold" early in cases like this, so there is literally no time to waste.

Unfortunately, in many gas explosion cases, the investigation conducted by public officials proceeds without the victim's family having any representation by a lawyer or experts hired by that lawyer. These public officials often work hand in hand with the gas supplier, landlord, or other persons that might be interested in exonerating themselves. The result is that crucial evidence that could help the victim or her family prove her case is sometimes overlooked, or worse, destroyed or hidden. That's why a gas-explosion victim's family should retain a New York gas explosion injury lawyer immediately.

And by the way, if you smell gas in your home, get out of the house, and get others out, immediately. And don't light anything, turn on any switches, or even dial a phone from inside the home. The smallest spark could ignite the dangerous mix of oxygen and gas trapped in your home. Go to a neighbor's house and from there call the utility company or whoever supplies your gas.

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

Three are dead and several injured, including a baby, in this evening's two-level house explosion in Salem, NY,

From my experience handling propane and gas injury cases, I can tell you this has all the hallmarks of a propane explosion: An extremely violent explosion completely demolishing the home, debris blown hundreds of feet out from the epicenter, insulation hanging from trees, shingles and other debris strewn everywhere, mattresses, too. Even cinder blocks are blown far from where walls once stood.

One of the survivors, a renter, said he had called his landlord about a propane leak earlier in the day. That probably means that he smelled the leak. If he did, he should not only have called his landlord, but he should also have gotten out of the house until the leak was fixed, and should have warned others to get out, too.

If you smell propane, get out, and get others out, without lighting anything, without turning on any switches, and without even calling from a phone. That's because any of those activities can create a tiny spark that will ignite the propane in the air, and cause an explosion. Go to a neighbor's house and call your propane supplier immediately from there. They should send someone immediately to investigate and fix the leak.

Depending on what the investigation reveals, the landlord may be held liable for not responding to this serious warning early on. The propane providers may also be liable for failure to properly warn, and for having improperly installed the propane delivery system, or for failing to properly inspect the propane delivery system for leaks on a regular basis. There are many other possible theories of liability, against various people and entities, depending on what the investigation turns up. The injured and their families should hire competent New York gas explosion injury lawyers immediately. Those lawyers should then hire competent explosion investigators and experts immediately to capture all the evidence before it disappears.

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

So what rights would we New Yorkers have to compensation in the event of a New York Nuclear Power Plant Catastrophe?

Let's assume that Oswego's Nuclear Power Plant suddenly broke down and started spewing out dangerous radioactivity, just like in Japan. Let's assume your family ended up sick, or dead, and that you had to move out of your home --- forever --- and that its market value was reduced to zero dollars. Can you sue the Power Plant owner? If so, for how much?

Well, I've got some bad news for you. Even though under New York common law principles you would be able to sue the power company for every penny of compensation you were entitled to for all those catastrophic losses, a not-well-known federal law trumps New York law, and would probably force you to accept pennies for every dollar you would otherwise be entitled to.

The law is called the Price-Anderson Act of 1957, and it places a damages cap on the liability of nuclear power plant owners or operators. Under this Act, the power plant owners or operators pay an insurance premium each year to create a kind of "no-fault" system for paying damages caused by nuclear accidents. The total payout available from the fund for personal injury and property loss for nuclear accidents amounts to only about $13 billion.

I say "only" because that's such a small amount of money considering the devastating, widespread catastrophic damages a nuclear disaster would unleash to hundreds of thousands of our local central New York residents and businesses. In fact, the damages that would result from a major nuclear catastrophe are estimated at more like $500 billion.

The stated intent of the Price-Anderson Act was to foster commercial development of nuclear power. But what ever happened to the free market system? Why shouldn't big power companies have to pay full dollar for catastrophes that, through their negligence, they unleash? The Act, which seems to me extremely unfair, survived a constitutional challenge in 1978 in Duke Power Co. v Carolina Environment Study Group

Who pays the price for this generous "gift" our federal government gave to the power industry? You do, of course. Should, god forbid, our local nuclear power company, through its negligence or carelessness, unleash a Japan-like disaster, none of us will get anything even close to true justice. We will be stuck with the pennies-on-a-dollar compensation provided for in the Price-Anderson Act. And as a Central New York personal injury lawyer, that both offends and scares me . . . .

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

I have been blogging lately about gas explosions. That's because gas explosions keep happening! As I said in my last few blogs about this topic, our natural gas supply system, owned and maintained by private utility companies, is aging and not being properly maintained and replaced by those companies. As a result, we are seeing an increase, nationwide, in natural gas explosions. Just a few weeks ago a main gas line explosion rocked Philadelphia, killing at least one person and severely injuring others. And last fall, a main gas pipeline explosion in California destroyed 38 homes, injured 50 and killed eight people.

But gas explosions strike closer to home, too. This week a house exploded in Horseheads, NY. According to Elmira New York personal injury lawyer Jim Read, preliminary indications indicate the cause was a natural gas leak. Also according to Jim, the house is less than 1/2 mile from another house that exploded because of a natural gas leak in a NYSEG service pipe a few years ago.

Also, just this week, the parents of one of the victims (a 20-year old college student) of the Fall 2010 natural gas pipeline explosion in California filed a wrongful death lawsuit against an (ir)responsible utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Their daughter died from the horrific burns she received while trying to escape the blaze in her home caused by the explosion. In the lawsuit, her parents are claiming the defendant PG&E failed to properly inspect and maintain the pipeline.

There has been a lot of talk about "tort reform". But so-called "tort-reformers" should ask themselves this question (and honestly answer it): If your 20-year old daughter died a horrific death by fire because a utility company decided to increase its profit margins by cutting gas pipe maintenance costs, would you sue? And if you sued, would you expect any fair system of justice to compensate you fully for your daughter's pain and suffering and your grief and loss? If your answer is "yes", then you should think again about "tort reform".

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

You can email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169

Gas explosions have caused some of the worst injuries I have ever seen in my career as a Central New York personal injury lawyer. They are what I call a "double whammy" - they cause terrible crush injuries (because buildings collapse on the victims) and just as terrible burn injuries (because of the explosion and fire). As a Central New York gas explosion lawyer, I have been representing 9 clients whose home exploded when a propane gas leak filled it with gas. Human cost? One dead, one paralyzed from the waist down, one whose legs are crushed beyond belief, and left 7 others with serious burn and crush injuries.

So today when I read about the huge gas main explosion in Philadelphia that killed a utility worker and left three co-workers in critical condition, I felt connected to those poor workers. They will have the same kinds of injuries my clients have. And I also feel proud of them. The workers had responded to a report of gas odor, found the leak, and were attempting to repair it. They probably knew the danger, but stepped up and did their duty.

A TV news channel caught the explosion on film.

Gas main explosions like this one are on the rise. Maybe you remember the terrible blast last September in California. Why are they on the rise? Our underground gas pipes nationwide are aging, corroding, and just plain falling apart. Yet utility companies apparently aren't in a hurry to replace them; that costs money and eats into profits. So, one might ask, why doesn't government step in and force their hand? Unfortunately, our government largely leaves it up to utility companies to inspect their own gas pipes and decide whether and when to replace them.

So where does that leave the rest of us? Simple: in harm's way. And there's not much we can do about it either. You can't go out into your street, dig it up, and inspect those pipes yourself. But if you get hurt in a gas explosion, you sure can sue.

Every single gas explosion I have ever been involved in as a New York gas explosion lawyer, or read about, could have been avoided if everyone, including the gas companies, had followed proper and safe gas explosion prevention practices. Unfortunately, more often than not, cutting corners, and cutting costs, wins out over safe practices. And that's why we need good gas explosion lawyers --- to get justice for the burned, crushed, broken dead and injured victims of preventable gas explosions.

I'm proud to do my job!

Keep safe!

Mike Bersani

Email me at: bersani@michaels-smolak.com I'd love to hear from you!

Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
michaels-smolak.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels & Smolak, P.C.

1-315-253-3293 Toll Free 1-866-698-8169