There was nothing on the eve of July 10, 2006 that could have prepared the Higdon family for what was to come the next day. Patrick and Margaret Higdon, along with their twin boys, James and Patrick, and daughter Megan, Margaret’s siblings and her parents, were holidaying at a vacation rental at Cedar Grove Resort about 200 miles north of Milwaukee. They had gone to bed after the usual vacation day - lazing around, eating at the restaurant nearby and playing cards.

At 2 in the morning, the family was roused by the sound of explosions. Within no time, the rental was on fire. Margaret’s parents and the three kids managed to escape, but Patrick and Margaret remained trapped. 12-year-old Megan watched as the building that had her parents inside burned faster and faster. All the time, she could hear her mother’s voice from inside the cabin, calling for help.

Help came too late for Patrick and Margaret. They didn’t make it through the fire. The kids were not spared injuries either. Megan suffered a shattered spleen and burns to her chest and lips. Patrick, then 14, suffered facial fractures. There were also first and second degree burns on his body. He has a loss of sensation in his cheek, and is not able to open his mouth fully. James was the hero of the hour. He raced back into the burning building to pull his grandfather out of the inferno. Although he suffered fewer physical injuries, psychologists have affirmed that he is the one in the most danger of having psychological problems from this tragedy.

After the fire, it was found that an electrical contractor company installing electrical line, Arby Construction Company, had ruptured a propane gas line that ran under the ground. When the family filed a lawsuit, they mentioned Cedar Grove Resort, Arby Construction Company, some construction companies and their insurance companies.

Now, court documents reveal that the settlement awarded to the children has been fixed at $21 million. These will take into account hospitalization expenses and lawyer’s fees, and will be used to set up trust funds for each of the three children. Currently Megan, Patrick and James live with their grandparents.

These are children who have been left permanently scarred by the events of that horrible night. To have a vacation turn into an inferno in a matter of minutes, and to have to watch helplessly as your parents perish, must have been painful beyond description. The children have a struggle ahead of them without their parents in their lives, and deserve the compensation they will now receive.

If you have been injured in an explosion, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury lawyer. Contact an attorney at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

A series of settlements have been announced in the Cook County Administration Building fire of 2003, which killed six people. Victims will now receive $25.3 million, of which Cook County will pay $9 million.

For the victims, it means the end of a long wait for an appropriate compensation for the trauma of that day, while for Cook County it means prevention of possible financial ruin if the case had actually gone to a jury. As it stands now, the insurance companies will pay the settlement. If the case had gone to a jury, Cook County would have been liable to pay out any amounts over their insurance coverage.

The fire broke out in the locker storage room of the building on October 17,2003. The six victims and another 16 others who were injured were trapped in the stairwell that had self-locking doors. The stairwell filled up with smoke, while the victims called for help on their cell phones.

One survivor’s, Jody Schneiderman’s, phone call to 911 was played out at a court hearing last year. In it, Schneiderman can be heard pleading for rescuers to come get them quick, while sounds of panic were heard all around her.

When the blaze had died down, 6 were dead, and the survivors were left to relive memories of that horrific day. As it turned out in the days after, a series of mistakes by firefighters and Cook County 911 services were to blame for the catastrophe. There was a complete lack of coordination, it appeared, which lead to confusion on the ground. They also failed to mark one stairwell for evacuation purposes to get those trapped in the building out to safety, and another for fire fighting purposes. The consequences were tragic.

This settlement is good for the county in more ways than one. Not only would they have been liable to pay the settlement from their own funds, which would have stretched them financially had the case gone to a jury, but they also avoid a rehashing of the sort of criticism that the fire department faced soon after the fire. A jury trial would have reopened old wounds and whipped up emotions against the Chicago Fire Department, a prospect Cook County probably didn’t relish. They can also avoid the prospect of survivors recounting damaging testimony about the complete and utter mismanagement that occurred on that day. One survivor said that she was ordered back into the stairwell by a firefighter. The stairwell quickly filled up with smoke. Such instances of ineptitude do nothing for the image that Cook County tries so dearly to protect, hence the relief over the settlement.

An old precedent makes Cook County immune to lawsuits that have been caused by errors of firefighters and other emergency service personnel, but exceptions have been made in this case. Obviously, the instances of ineptitude by the firefighters were glaring enough to set aside old precedents.

If you have been injured or a loved one has been killed in a fuel-fed fire, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury lawyer. Contact an attorney at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

A tragic explosion in an office building in a Westchester business district had one casualty on Wednesday afternoon. There won’t be a huge media coverage of the incident, no politicians dropping sound bytes. Every time a firefighter or other service personnel dies in the line of duty we need to remind ourselves that these are people who risk their lives and put their safety on the line, so we can be safe.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Brent A. Lovrein was part of a firefighter team that was investigating smoke and a couple of blasts at a Westchester business district. He was investigating an office building at Sepulveda and La Tijera boulevards. An electrical vault apparently blew apart, throwing building material on the 35-year-old firefighter. He died of injuries sustained during the explosion. Another firefighter, Anthony Guzman, sustained injuries including a fractured arm and ankle and was treated at UCLA Medical Center. The firefighters were investigating the metal-clad door to the vault when it exploded. The explosion was strong enough to blow metal and stucco out of the building. Residents reported hearing what sounded like a sonic boom.

The explosion followed a series of earlier explosions in which two manhole covers were blasted into the air.

According to initial investigations, the cause of the explosion has not been confirmed, but it could have been due to an electrical malfunction. The firefighters were investigating an earlier explosion in which smoke was seen coming out of underground utilities. The cause of that explosion is still a mystery. It could not have been an electrical outage because there was no blackout in the area. Investigators are still baffled by what caused the earlier explosion.

FBI agents and Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad officers have been called in to help with investigations.

Some residents of the building reported smelling gas just before the explosion that killed Lovrein rocked the building. These reports are not confirmed. Other evidence suggests that a firefighter used an electrical saw to open the vault, which ignited the spark that caused the explosion. There has already been speculation about the possibility of methane or some other gas in the atmosphere before the explosion.

We hope the investigations can reveal the true cause of this explosion so Lovrein’s family can find peace. They deserve to know the truth behind the explosion, and what caused it. The Los Angeles Fire Department is currently mourning Lovrein and rallying around Guzman who remains in hospital for treatment. Lovrein leaves behind his parents and a brother.

The husband and young daughter of a young woman killed in a gas explosion in Saratoga Springs, Utah last year have settled with Questar Gas and other contractors.

The amount has not been disclosed, but according to Utah’s Daily Herald, it is a seven-figure cash payment.

The explosion occurred on February 6, 2007. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the chain of events began when S & E Cable, working as a subcontractor to Angilau, Niels Fugal and Qwest, used a pneumatic powered underground mole known as a “missile” to drill a hole in the ground for the purpose of laying down a permanent phone and data line. The hole was being drilled towards the home where Greg Roper, his wife April Roper, and their two-year-old daughter had just moved in. The missile punctured a Questar gas pipeline.

When Questar received the call that the pipeline had been ruptured, they sent technicians to fix the ruptured pipe. The pipe was fixed, and the technicians evacuated nearby homes while they checked for the presence of gas. The entire procedure seems to have been really shoddy, because April Roper was allowed to go back into the house while there was still a danger of a gas explosion. When she and Larry Radford, a Questar employee, switched on the furnace, a powerful explosion ripped through the house, and leveled it. Both April and Larry were killed instantly. April’s two-year-old daughter sustained minor injuries. She had been playing outside the house.

In his lawsuit against Questar and the three subcontractors involved, Greg Roper alleged that S & E, the company that had been responsible for drilling the hole for laying the cable, was an unlicensed contractor whose technicians lacked the experience necessary considering the nature of the job. The S & E contractor who was working on drilling the hole was working alone, and lacked the experience to make any repairs to the ruptured gas pipeline. Furthermore, Questar employees took their time arriving at the scene of the incident, finally arriving a full two hours after the pipeline had been ruptured and gas had been leaking. In these two hours, the ruptured gas pipe line leaked nearly 9000 cubic feet of natural gas in the ground beneath the Roper home.

Not only was their response tardy, Questar also made major and expensive miscalculations with regards to evacuation of the residents. April Roper was allowed back into her house when it was apparently not safe to go back in. Not only that, all ignition sources in the house should have been turned off prior to her going back in, but this was not done. The entire procedure was haphazardly conducted, considering the seriousness of the matter.

As part of the wrongful death settlement, Questar gas will change some of its procedures for dealing with underground gas leaks. It’s unfortunate that it took something like this tragedy to bring about much needed changes to Questar’s procedures. Hopefully, April Roper’s death will prevent similar tragedies from fires and explosions.

It was a fiery day in the 700 block of the South Westlake Avenue in Los Angeles, California. A fire that began in the apartment of a 58-year-old resident, killed him and displaced at least 11 other residents. In all, two children and nine adults have been displaced from the 10-unit building. Seventy-one firefighters had to be pressed into service to bring the fire under control. Luckily for the residents, the flames were contained in the apartment where the fire started.

The fire caused an approximated $50,000 worth of damage to the building and $5,000 to the contents of the building. The cause of the fire is not clear.

One thing is clear however. The residents were living inside a ticking time bomb as far as the danger of a fire was concerned. Investigations have revealed that the building was equipped with basic fire sprinklers. The apartment of the man killed, Doug Jones, where the fire is believed to have started did not even have a functioning smoke alarm. With safety conditions like these, the residents have their good fortune and some Christmas blessings to thank for the fact that they escaped without injuries. They certainly aren’t alive because the building management did their job right - that’s for sure.

For now, one man is dead, and 11 people face an extremely uncertain future. The fact that the accident happened in a festive season makes it even more distressing. The residents have been referred to the Red Cross for placement assistance, but it will be a while before they feel comfortable in their new apartments once again.

A fire in a residential building can be a devastating experience. Most fires take a second to ignite and barely a few minutes to cause extensive damage. California law mandates that apartments should be fitted with smoke alarms. The management at block 700 was obviously negligent in its responsibilities, thereby being responsible for the damage and destruction caused by the fire.

If you have been injured or a loved-one has been killed due to a fire caused by negligence, contact the California persona injury and wrongful death lawyers at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.