'We're miracles': Family sues CenterPoint after 2022 explosion at La Porte home caused burn injuries

LA PORTE, Texas (KTRK) -- When a pipeline explosion shot flames hundreds of feet into the sky in La Porte earlier this week, Patricia Harkins told ABC13 she "had such a bad anxiety attack" that she vomited.

Harkins said the incident brought back traumatic memories from the La Porte home explosion she and her daughter narrowly survived in 2022.

The two explosions are not related. Energy Transfer owns the pipeline that blew up after authorities say an SUV rammed into it Monday. CenterPoint Energy is responsible for the residential gas line that Harkins alleges caused her home to explode in 2022.

Harkins, her daughter, grandson, and neighbors' case against CenterPoint Energy will go to trial next month.

They maintain that CenterPoint's purported negligence caused the blast that left Harkins and her daughter, Pamela French, with burns over approximately 50% of their bodies.

At the time of the blast, Harkins and French had been living together as French fought breast cancer and tried to get back on her feet after a divorce.

The two were preparing Thanksgiving lunch together on Nov. 26, 2022. French said she had chopped eggs for a potato salad and noticed the scent seemed to linger.

"I thought, 'I'm gonna light a candle,' I lit a candle, and the house exploded," she explained.

Coon said the egg scent was caused by a gas leak. He said a root ball had fractured their neighbor's gas line, and the gas migrated, building up in the home. He said CenterPoint was negligent and failed to maintain underground vegetation near the line.

"They're not maintaining the vegetation you can see. So you can imagine what they're doing with the vegetation you can't see," Coon said.

He said CenterPoint had been warned that the piping material used was ineffective and that its manufacturer had encouraged replacement for decades.

The lawsuit accuses the energy utility of failure to adhere to industry best practices.

Coon, known for his work suing British Petroleum, is also representing thousands of Texans in a separate case against CenterPoint tied to Winter Storm Uri in 2021.

"It's almost invariably associated with saving money or attempts to save money," Coon said of the cases.

The explosion killed the mother-daughter's kitten and a dog that French had adopted from a recently deceased friend.

"I promised I would take care of (the dog)," she cried.

"The last thing I remember, it felt like somebody was pushing me as hard as they could," Harkins said.

Her grandson, French's son, was in the driveway at the time of the blast. He ran to help the two women who were airlifted to Memorial Hermann, where French spent two weeks in a medically induced coma. She said her family was asked if they wanted to take her off of life support.

"Nobody's children should have to make a decision which could potentially kill their mother," she sobbed.

To date, Harkins and French have undergone more than 20 surgeries combined.

"We are miracles," Harkins said.

In the immediate aftermath of the blast, treatment included skin grafts and near-daily bandage changes.

"No human should ever have to endure that kind of pain. It would last almost two and a half hours. I'm sorry. I promised myself I would not cry. It was the most excruciatingly painful thing anybody could go through. They literally scrub your skin off," French said.

French said she would become physically ill in the hours leading up to the treatments and had to be physically sedated. She also said she was separated from her mother in the hospital.

"(Medical professionals) said, 'We didn't think we would ever be able to bring you back as many times as we had to,' and to lose a child would be bad enough, but to lose a child right next to you, they said she would have died too. She would have grieved herself to death in that time," French explained.

French, who rang the bell having beaten breast cancer treatment five weeks before the blast, did not have to undergo chemotherapy or lose her hair during treatment. She said the blast burned her hair off, and treatment included chemotherapy injections.

"They did not think either one of us was going to make it. I cry now because I can still see her in intensive care, hooked up to so many machines. She had no hair, and I knew she loved her hair," Harkins said.

French said that at the time of the blast, she had secured a "really great job" and planned to move out of her mother's house, having "found an apartment."

"I was getting my life back," she said. "Everything was shattered."

The women have a number of surgeries scheduled and also routinely undergo less invasive treatments involving lasers and injections to maintain mobility in thick and tight scar tissue. Their newly grafted skin, they told ABC13, is so delicate they must stay out of the sun because it blisters. French said she struggles to wear shoes because it tears the fragile skin open.

"My feet will literally be a bloody pulp," she said.

French, who previously worked in safety and compliance for oil and natural gas facilities, said she is currently unable to work.

"I expected something like this to happen in a plant that I was doing safety for, never in my own home that was 100% electric," French said.

Having lost their home, French is currently living in her brother's RV. Harkins is living in a rental home. The mother-daughter told ABC13 they feel they are "living in limbo" ahead of the trial.

"I hope that we accomplish awareness of how negligent CenterPoint is; I hope that we accomplish the fact that people need to have monitors in their homes so that nothing like this happens. I hope that we become aware of how something like this can happen to anybody, and I hope that we accomplish (CenterPoint) admitting what they've done to us and making them accountable so that this does not happen to anyone else. I hope and pray that they are held liable to the fullest extent possible so that another person has to fall victim to CenterPoint," French said.

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