A crowd of displaced residents made up the backdrop of a lawsuit announcement made today by Gustavo Torres, director of the non-profit advocacy group CASA.
Torres said in September that former residents of the Flower Branch Apartments, which caught fire after an explosion in August, were preparing to sue responsible parties. This morning, he announced that they have filed suit against Washington Gas and Kay Management, the company that runs the apartment complex in Silver Spring.
The fire, which erupted on August 10, took the lives of seven people, including two children. Another thirty people were injured and more than 80 families were displaced, many of whom are now suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, Torres said.
“One of the fire stations about a mile away felt the explosion just before midnight, prior to getting the 911 dispatch to the structure,” Montgomery County Fire Department Chief Scott Goldstein said at a press conference following the incident.
More than a week after the fire, authorities announced that it was the result of a natural gas explosion, which was sparked in a meter room in one of the two buildings that were destroyed during the fire.
An investigation is currently being handled by the National Transportation Safety Board, a federal group that reports directly to Congress. A NTSB spokesperson said that it may take up to one year to close the investigation and part of the findings will include determining what exactly ignited the explosion.
Five plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit in D.C. superior court today, said John Barrett, an attorney from the D.C. law firm Bailey & Glasser. They will represent 75 household impacted by the fire. There are also 30 individual plaintiffs who filed personal injury lawsuits.
About three weeks before the fire, a resident reported the smell of gas, Barrett said. “Kay Management and Washington Gas did nothing to correct that.”
There is no dollar amount stated in the suits, Barrett added. “It’s not just about money—this action is about justice,” Torres said. “We truly believe that it is very important that we bring justice to these families, we truly believe that it is very essential that we speak out very clearly because the truth is haunting.”
“If this happened in a rich neighborhood, we would have an answer immediately, but because these families live in a poor neighborhood, we still haven’t received any answers,” he continued.
