Bath, PA – The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has leveled its maximum fine of $2 million against a Moore Township mobile home park operator for safety violations discovered after a deadly explosion last year.
William Neith died Feb. 14, 2014, when his home at 118 Hickory Hills Drive exploded due to a natural gas leak. The resulting investigation by the PUC found 39 violations, including that Hickory Hills mobile home park and its parent company Continental Communities had not registered its two-mile natural gas pipeline system with the state for inspection for years.
“Due to the egregious and serious nature of this incident, which includes a fatality, (the PUC) requests that the statutory maximum civil penalty be imposed,” wrote Wayne T. Scott, the first deputy chief prosecutor for the PUC’s Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement.
Bob Fitzgerald, Continental Communities’ vice president and chief operating officer, was not immediately available for comment Friday afternoon.
In a complaint released Thursday, the PUC said a survey seven years earlier found multiple leaks and recommended the pipeline system be removed. The PUC found reports of a leaking gas line at Neith’s home in 2012 and 2014, but projects to replace the pipes were cancelled, the complaint says.
The mobile home park had no written procedures in place on how it would control corrosion of the pipes or track maintenance. It also had no written procedures on training employees and communicating with first responders in the event of a natural gas disaster, according to the complaint.
If not for the state cap on fines, Hickory Hills would have faced a $7.8 million fee for the violations, according to the report.
Neith and girlfriend Hilda Parsons first complained of the smell of natural gas more than a month before the explosion, according to the report. A park employee and a certified handyman visited the home several times but were unable to find the source of a leak, according to the report.
The gas became so bad that both next-door neighbors complained to park management. The smell “got progressively worse each day to the point that when they would step out of their house, it would bum their eyes,” the report said.
The night of the explosion, Neith was burning candles in the house to mask the smell because park officials assured them their home was safe, Parsons told investigators.