Excerpts from the journal times.com:
A criminal investigation into who was responsible for a massive explosion that leveled several buildings and killed a volunteer firefighter last July has concluded that no crime was committed, Sun Prairie Police Chief Patrick Anhalt said Thursday. A broken chain of communication between utility contractors and subcontractors resulted in the location of a gas line being improperly marked prior to the July 10 explosion.
Abigail Barr, the widow of Sun Prairie Volunteer Fire Department Capt. Cory Barr, who was killed by the explosion, filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming VC Tech, Bear Communications, USIC Locating Services, and WEC Energy Group, known as We Energies are responsible for Barr’s death in the explosion.
Volunteer firefighters Ryan Welch and Greg Pavlik also filed lawsuits against the four companies for personal injury.
A police report released Thursday indicated the failure to mark a key spot where fiber-optic communications cable being installed by Verizon was to cross the path of the gas line happened because a subcontractor had dropped out of the project. As a result, the company marking the pavement on behalf of the subcontractor did not finish locating the underground utilities. When the underground work was passed on to another subcontractor, the contractor doing the work for Verizon told the new subcontractor to proceed, believing the work locating underground utilities had been finished. But it had not. The new subcontractor then struck the gas line in the street, which led to the explosion that destroyed several businesses and killed Barr and injured several others.
The state Fire Marshal’s Office said in its final report that investigators could not find what caused the gas to ignite, only that the explosion originated near the Barr House, 100 W. Main St.
