More than a dozen neighbors in Waxahachie's Saddlebrook subdivision filed a lawsuit against Atmos Energy claiming the company was partially responsible for a house exploding there last year.
On Sept. 21, 2015, Adele Chavez turned on her electric stove when the house around her exploded.
"I was looking at the house and saying, 'Lord, I don't know how I survived this,” said Chavez.
She and her brother survived, but were badly hurt; their home sustained major damage.
Last October, Chavez filed a lawsuit against a company that claimed their horizontal drill clipped both a gas line and her sewer line while they installed fiber-optic lines. The break in the sewer line, Chavez and her attorneys said, allowed the leaking gas to seep into her home undetected for four days before the explosion.
On Wednesday, a group of neighbors brought forth the new lawsuit claiming that Atmos Energy is also at fault in the situation for improperly installing the gas line.
Neighbor Jeff Dotson said, upon investigation, they discovered that the excess flow valve, a small plastic pipe that retails for about $20, was installed across the street from Chavez’s home near his curb, but the group’s attorney, Tom Carse said that the valve is intended to be installed as close to the main line as possible; which would be at Chavez’s home.
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Carse believes had that been installed correctly, it would have stopped the leaking gas and prevented the explosion.
"This is not a freak accident,” said Carse. "This, for $20, and you put it in the right place, this is inexcusable."
The neighbors also claim that Atmos could have better educated neighbors that gas leaks are possible even when the smell of gas is not. Dotson said he noticed his hot water not working days before the accident, but didn’t report it when he was instructed to only use the company’s emergency after-hours number if the smell of gas was present.
In a statement on Wednesday, Atmos Energy spokeswoman Jennifer Altieri said:
Atmos Energy is aware of the recently filed claim and denies the allegations. Atmos Energy received no reports that the natural gas line had been cut prior to the incident in Waxahachie. Atmos Energy's natural gas system was safe until it was damaged by a cable company contractor.
Chavez and her neighbors said they just want to ensure that their close call doesn’t happen to anyone else.
