Houston Plant Explosion Accident Attorney

If you and your family were injured in a recent explosion in Houston, call the explosion accident attorneys at the law firm of Fleming Law today. An industrial explosion can cause serious injury to you and your family, damage your home, and even cause the wrongful death of a loved one. Our attorneys are ready to speak to you, day or night about your injuries. Call us at 723-221-6800 or use the contact form to the right.

Why Do These Explosions Occur?

Many companies in the Houston, Texas area employ chemical processes to produce products such as plastics that are used to make many things we are familiar with. These include domestic items such as plastic food containers and cutting boards for your kitchen, rugs, and carpets for your living room and bedrooms, plastic syringes, cylinders, and vials used in medical labs, and large plastic garbage bins for trash and recycling.

Reactors at these industrial chemical plants distill polymer particles which become the raw materials for making all of these products. Gas and heat are used extensively in the process, fed into and out of the reactor, and then recycled and reused so the process can be continuous.

Using gas and heat in any manufacturing process is extremely dangerous, and companies in this business must be diligent in storing these products safely at their site. While many industrial companies are located outside of the city, and away from residents, some are within the city limits. If an industrial accident, such as an explosion occurs at one of these sites, it can have a devastating impact on area residents.

The Impact of an Explosion in Houston

When a gas explosion occurs, it can flatten homes and businesses in the immediate area. Homes within a mile or two will have significant property and structural damage, and more importantly, the blast will result in injuries or death. Take, for example, a natural gas leakage that recently caused an explosion that collapsed the roof of a renovated home, killed an 11-year-old girl, and injured four others.

If you or a loved one has been injured from an explosion caused by a gas leak, you may be entitled to pursue a legal claim against the company and/or the property owner. Our law firm stands ready to assist you in your claim. We offer a free consultation, so it costs you nothing to find out if you have a valid claim.

Establishing Your Houston Explosion Injury Claim

In order to prove that an industrial company was responsible for the explosion and your injuries, you would need to establish some factors. These include:

• The company’s duty of care: Every company must routinely check the equipment they use on-premises, especially tanks that contain flammable and combustible gases. They must respond quickly and professionally to reports of any actual or perceived leaks or any other maintenance issue that could cause an accident. A duty is thus imposed on them to ensure that all equipment is in good working order.
• Breach of the duty: In order to establish this, you can show that the company knew or should have known about a gas leakage and still failed to respond to it or that they failed to fix an issue thoroughly. Where they fail to perform the duty placed on them by law, they have breached that duty.
• Injury caused by a breach of the duty: This means that you must show a connection between your injury and the breach of the company’s duty. If an explosion occurs, damages your home and you suffered an injury as a direct result, it may be due to the failure of the company to respond quickly to a reported leak or fix it thoroughly. In this case, there would be a clear connection.

Once you have established your claim, you would be entitled to compensation for medical expenses, scarring or disfigurement caused by the injury, partial or total disability, and even in some cases, punitive damages.

Bear in mind, that for the above injury claim scenarios, the state of Texas does have a time limit on how long you may wait to bring your claim against the other party. This time limit is known as the Statute of Limitations. The statute sets a time limit of two years for your suit. If you have not brought your lawsuit to court before that two years have expired, you have lost your chance for a court case.

Speak to a Houston Injury Attorney Today

Get in touch with the Houston personal injury lawyers at the law firm of Fleming Law today if you or a loved one were the victims of a gas explosion or other catastrophic events from an industrial accident. We offer free, confidential case reviews at 713-221-6800.