Plum mayor, neighbors hope Rustic Ridge lawsuits will bring answers

After families of six people killed in a 2023 house explosion in Plum sued multiple companies for alleged negligence and wrongful death Tuesday, the borough’s mayor and neighbors in the Rustic Ridge housing plan say they hope the suits will offer some answers nearly two years later.

Filed in Allegheny County Court, the suits assert a pipeline leak filled the basement of Heather and Paul Oravitz’s home with flammable gas that ignited, killing the husband and wife as well as Michael Thomas, Plum’s borough manager; Kevin Sebunia; and father and son Casey and Keegan Clontz .

Authorities have not reached any official conclusion about the cause of the explosion. But the lawyers theorize odorless natural gas from the pipe migrated underground into the Oravitz’s basement and continued to power a water heater, even though the appliance’s gas supply had been shut off.

Their lawsuits accuse two energy companies — Delmont-based Penneco Oil Co. and Peoples Gas — of being aware of a leaking, overpressurized gas line but not fixing it. The lawsuits also allege A.O. Smith, the Milwaukee company that made the water heater, failed to notify consumers of the “risk of an explosion” when burning an external fuel source. And they found fault with the developer that built the Rustic Ridge subdivision for establishing it near three Penneco natural gas wells.

Plum Mayor Harry Schlegel said he hopes the lawsuits will bring a resolution to the long saga in the borough.

“Let the suits go forward, absolutely,” Schlegel said. “Somebody’s got to be responsible.”

The mayor said he believes only methane from an abandoned mine or a natural gas leak could have caused the blast. Houses, he said, “don’t just blow up.”

The Schlegel family was close with the Oravitzes before the explosion, and he said his family has remained so with the two surviving Oravitz children, Taylor and Cole.

While he said the community in Plum has “done its healing” over the past two years, Schlegel said the family members who lost loved ones are still suffering with their loss.

Jimmy Stecik, 54, who lives a few houses away from the site of the explosion, said he’s still a little jumpy when he hears loud noises in the neighborhood, but he said he thinks he and others in Rustic Ridge have begun to move on from the incident.

Still, he said the sight of the grass field where three homes once stood serves as a reminder of the tragedy.

“Every day you pull in, you see an empty lot, it’s sort of like a scar right now,” Stecik said.

The resident said he hopes the suits will allow the victims’ families to be “compensated properly” — and offer some answers as to how such an explosion could have occurred in the first place.

Another neighbor on Rustic Ridge Drive, Karen Schultise, 77, said she also is hoping for some clarity regarding the explosion’s cause.

The blast ripped her door off and largely destroyed her daughter’s home down the street, she said. It still makes Schultise sad to think of the loss of life so close to home.

Other nearby neighbors did not answer the door or declined to comment for this story.

Soon after the lawsuits were filed, representatives for Penneco and Peoples rebuffed the allegation that the leaking pipe could have been the cause of the explosion.

“The Allegheny County fire marshal has publicly stated that there is no evidence of anything outside of the foundation of the home that caused the explosion,” Penneco Oil Chief Operating Officer Ben Wallace told TribLive. “The Pennsylvania Utilities Commission, the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Allegheny County fire marshal thoroughly investigated this and gave us absolutely no reason to believe we are in any way involved in the explosion.”

On Sept. 8, 2023, the fire marshal’s office said the point of origin for the explosion was inside the house.

A spokesman for Peoples Gas told TribLive on Tuesday that investigators “found no evidence” linking the utility company’s infrastructure to the explosion.

An employee at Grasinger Homes Inc. and Michelle Grasinger, a Realtor listed on the developer’s website as a company contact, declined comment Tuesday.