Tracy Stephenson remembers a flash of light at 4:30 a.m. and “the loudest noise I’ve ever heard.” It was Jan. 24, her birthday, and she thought a plane had crashed into her house in northwest Houston.
Insulation was popping out of the wall as she walked to her mother's room. Picture frames and mirrors had fallen off the walls and lay broken on the floor. Her mom, 86-year-old Karon Maples, was covered in shattered glass from her bedroom window. Their front door was jammed shut.
It was not a plane crash, but the explosion of a 2,000-gallon propylene tank at Watson Grinding & Manufacturing, a machining and coatings business just 1,100 feet from Stephenson’s house. The blast killed two workers and damaged hundreds of nearby homes. The family of a resident who died days later said that was related to the explosion as well, after his ceiling had crashed down on him.
Five months and one pandemic later, many residents in working-class Westbranch continue to wrangle with insurers, hiring attorneys and wondering how — or if — they ever will fully recover.
Stephenson remains displaced by the blast. Since Feb. 17, she has lived in an extended-stay hotel with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend, and four dogs. Still, they consider themselves lucky, she said.
Construction crews have stripped her house to its studs and rebuilt it. This week, they are expected to begin hanging drywall inside and painting, and the structure finally looks “like a house again,” she said. This is how the system is supposed to work — Stephenson’s insurance policy covered the blast without a legal fight, and the company is paying for her rent, as well.
Many of her neighbors have had it tougher, she said.
The CEO of Watson made — and then rescinded — a promise to pay for all the damage the explosion caused. Lawyers who have filed hundreds of lawsuits against the company say it will not have the resources to make every victim whole. And insurance companies have responded unevenly, granting some claims while denying or challenging others.
Complicating matters for the plaintiffs, Watson filed for bankruptcy after the explosion, and on Feb. 10 sought an emergency ruling that would have allowed it to pay off a bank loan with $3 million of insurance money. The request was met with a seven-minute tirade by federal judge Marvin Isgur, who said the focus in the proceedings, which remain ongoing, would be on the victims left reeling from the blast.
Frank Peters owns the house two doors down from Stephenson on Bridgeland Lane. Just eight hours after the blast, Peters’ insurance company told him his policy did not cover explosions. He has hired a lawyer and tried to fix the house himself, working long hours and sleeping little.
“It has broken me,” Peters said. “I really have no accomplishments in life, but I bought this house and I remodeled it… It was the only successful thing I’ve done in life. So, I had a lot of pride in it, and it was destroyed.”
At a town hall meeting hosted by the nearby Mormon church in the days after the blast, residents were told it would take three years before the neighborhood could return to some semblance of normal. And that was before another catastrophe set in: COVID-19.
For Stephenson, quarantine means getting by in a crowded hotel suite. For many of her neighbors, it means staying in broken homes, with shifted walls and collapsed ceilings. Others have moved altogether or crashed on relatives’ couches.
Many residents said they do not feel the continuing consequences of the blast have put them at greater risk for contracting the coronavirus. The pandemic shutdown, however, has taken an economic toll, with many losing work at a time when they are especially in need of cash to repair their homes, pay for new living arrangements, or simply cover everyday necessities.
“It’s like a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode that never ends,” Stephenson said.
‘Stuck here’
The shell of Watson Grinding & Manufacturing looms on Gessner Road as a reminder of the explosion’s powerful force, with its warehouse’s metal siding warped and crumpled where it is not missing.
Only a drainage ditch separates the plant from the intersection of Bridgeland Lane and Stanford Court, the edge of the subdivision built in the late 1970s. The residents here call it “Ground Zero.” Five empty lots lie vacant where homes once crowded the corner.
Other homes remain boarded up or reduced to their studs as residents labor through a recovery process that remains in its early phases. Yard signs show which attorneys residents have hired, not the political candidates they favor.
Dozens of dumpsters crowd the subdivision’s streets as construction crews remove stucco from the sides of houses, wrap frames in Tyvek plastic and hang sheetrock.
A survey conducted by the city found more than 450 houses harmed by the explosion, with 35 suffering “major” structural failure. Some of the homes marked in that survey with “minor” damage or as simply “affected” by the blast since have been condemned and taken down. And many of the neighborhood’s homes remain empty; their owners or tenants displaced.
“You can count the people that are in houses,” said James H. Bailey, Sr, who recently was able to move back into his home on Valleywood Drive. “We’re the only ones on this street.”
Some return to the neighborhood in the evenings to collect mail, assess progress on rebuilds and catch up with neighbors. They discuss some of the blast’s curious effects — cars generally proved more durable than houses, for instance. One resident said an antique glass-doored bookshelf was spared, but everything on the other side of the wall in the adjacent room was broken.
Some residents, like Peters, have been left without any money, taking loans and draining savings to try to do the repairs themselves. Many others received inadequate checks from their insurers. Ana Moss, who lives on Richmond Hill Drive, received $29,000, and she said a contractor estimated the full repairs would be in excess of $100,000. Her next door neighbor initially was offered $8,000, she said, but she was able to negotiate and get more than $60,000.
Moss sat outside her home on a recent afternoon, sheltered in the shade of a now-leaning garage, a result of the blast, she said. Like others still scraping by in their homes, struggling with insurers and red tape, she sometimes feels stranded.
“We’re stuck in here,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I just feel so frustrated.”
Moss, 65, is disabled and cannot work, so she relies on her daughter — a bartender and waitress, whose shifts have been cut amid the pandemic — to survive. Moss has gone to the food bank, and she shares her supply with a neighbor who still is in her home.
“She has made me think that I still have purpose in this life,” Moss said of her daughter.
Moss cuts the grass and tends to her plants, and she does the same for some of the vacant houses nearby. The small, manicured lawns are a departure from the dumpsters and debris. She said it helps keep her mind off the despair of her situation. She is trying to focus on the good — she is alive, her daughter is alive, and they still have a house, even if it slants.
Targeting a loophole
Mayor Sylvester Turner hopes to bring a list of reforms recommended by Houston Fire Chief Sam Peña to city council by August, his office said.
They include closing a loophole that fails to account for chemicals stored outdoors, like the propylene tank at Watson; adding a second hazmat unit to the department’s arsenal; and adopting the 2015 International Fire Code, with an amendment that would require companies to inspect storage tanks and piping on an annual basis, Peña said.
Those changes directly address issues involved in the Watson blast.
Other measures had been in the works before the explosion. Peña said the department implemented a risk-based inspection schedule in February, which prioritizes the 75,000-plus commercial businesses in Houston so more dangerous ones get inspected more regularly.
While those changes could help prevent future explosions, they will not help Westbranch residents facing massive repair and reconstruction bills.
The federal government has pitched in some money for that effort. At Gov. Greg Abbott’s request, the Small Business Administration declared a disaster after the explosion, allowing businesses and homeowners to take out low-interest loans to help cover those costs. As of May, the SBA had given out 35 loans worth just over $2 million.
Isgur, the federal judge overseeing Watson’s bankruptcy proceedings, in May “unfroze” the personal lawsuits against Watson filed by residents. That creates a final window for residents to pursue claims against the company, which closes July 8. After that, residents will not be able to sue Watson.
At the end of October, the judge will issue a ruling on whether the individual cases proceed in state or federal court, according to Robert Kwok, a lawyer who represents several Westbranch residents. Lawyers also are negotiating payouts with Watson, according to Kwok, who added that they also expect to pursue lawsuits against other companies, such as the firm that supplied the propylene.
Carole Goff, 65, has lived on Bridgeland for decades and is semi-retired. She went to bed on a Thursday night, she said, and when she woke up everything had changed.
Goff did not have insurance when the explosion occurred, so her only recourse is a long legal slog. She has done some patch-work around the house, but she has not been able to pursue the more robust repairs her home needs.
“To say it’s been disruptive is an understatement,” she said. “This isn’t a wealthy neighborhood by any means.”
The many people whose only hope for financial relief is tied up in those lawsuits — Goff, Moss and Peters among them — can only wait, hoping “it won’t take forever and a day,” Goff said.
“There’s no guarantees,” she added. “That’s even worse, and I hate to think about that.”
dylan.mcguinness@chron.com
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Five months and a pandemic later, victims of deadly Gessner blast still struggling to recover - Houston Chronicle
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