Fatal fire prompts $25M lawsuit

TEXAS CITY — Relatives of a woman who was severely burned in her senior living apartment filed a $25 million wrongful death lawsuit against the apartment complex and its management company.

Melody Fitzgerald Rivera, 52, was a resident of Colonial Park Apartments, a Texas City complex, when a fire erupted in her apartment on April 7, 2010, the lawsuit states.

Tuesday, attorney Trey Apffel III filed the lawsuit in Galveston County Probate Court on behalf of Rivera’s children, Clifford Ray Trapani and Wendy Gail Trapani Andersen. The lawsuit names as defendants H M Management Co., of Fayetteville, Tenn., and Texas City Limited Partnership, which was doing business as Colonial Park Apartments.

Firefighters responded to the 1:30 a.m. blaze in the 1100 block of 34th Street North and found the fire had quickly spread through an apartment and into a second-story unit, Texas City fire Chief Brud Gorman told The Daily News for a story published the following day.

The fire spread while Rivera was sleeping, the lawsuit claims. Firefighters pulled Rivera from the apartment, and an ambulance took her to the University of Texas Medical Branch.

Rivera suffered third-degree burns, the most serious of burns, to 65 percent of her body, and she was admitted into the university’s burn unit, the lawsuit claims.

Rivera’s first skin-grafting surgery took place the day of the fire, and she would endure three others through April 19, when she was in critical condition, the lawsuit claims.

Rivera’s wounds progressed to the point where she became septic. She died April 21, 2010.

“Her condition continued to deteriorate over this time until she developed acute respiratory failure,” the lawsuit claims. “She ultimately succumbed to her injuries.”

The cause of the fire was electrical in nature and started in a mechanical closet that housed the apartment’s heating and cooling unit, the lawsuit claims.

The closet’s configuration had the unit’s power cord routed over the top of the unit to reach the electricity plug, the lawsuit states.

“The source of the ignition for this fire stemmed from an electrical failure involving the HVAC line cord at the approximate location where the cord traversed and laid across the top edge of the north side for the air handler housing,” the lawsuit claims.

The cord’s insulation was compromised and the heating effects associated with micro arcing

____________
source: Galveston Daily News (Paschenko, 2/19)