Plano, Texas-based Urban Oil & Gas Group and its insurer were sued over a fatal oil storage tank that exploded in February. The surviving family members of 14-year-old Zalee Day-Smith filed the suit in Lake Charles, Louisiana federal court.
The youth was allegedly sitting on the tank near her mother’s house in Ragley when it exploded on February 28. The force from the explosion threw her into the air and her body was found hundreds of yards away from the tank site. The lawsuit says Day-Smith and family members thought the tanks weren’t being used.
“The absence of security measures or signage led decedent and plaintiffs to believe that the battery was inactive and abandoned, whereas it was actually active and dangerous,” the complaint states.
Urban Oil officials have previously told The Advocate of Baton Rouge that they have sympathy for the family while broadly defending their safety record and declining further comment.
The 14-year-old girl’s death has already prompted Louisiana regulators to establish new rules to fence off oil field tanks and attempt to identify all such storage tank batteries that aren’t connected to pipelines.
The lawsuit blames Urban Oil & Gas for not monitoring conditions at the tank site, not maintaining the tank properly, not fencing off the tank site and not putting up warning signs.
The new state rules require operators to surround sites with fences at least four feet high, along with a gate that is locked when the sites are unattended. Tank hatches must be securely sealed when unmanned, unless they are part of a pressure relief system. Signs must note the hazards of the tanks.
These regulations apply to sites within 500 feet of a highway or a home, 1,000 feet of a school or church, or anywhere within the limits of a city, town or village.
A 2011 report by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board highlighted the dangers of not having warning signs and fences at storage facilities. It noted that 44 people were killed and 25 were injured in 26 explosions from 1983-2010.
