Man severely burned in sidewalk explosion in Queens, NYC

A man suffered severe burns in a sidewalk explosion in Queens last week.

57 year old Barry West was heading to his T-mobile store to pay his cell phone bill when a Coned underground transformer exploded sending a ball of fire through the sidewalk grate. The man was engulfed in the flames before he was able to move to safety. He suffered second degree burns in multiple areas of his face and body and was immediately hospitalized.  The man was still in the hospital a week after the accident. He told the NY Daily News that the explosion just came from nowhere. He felt he lost a lot of skin and was in so much pain that he could not work.

A similar explosion occurred at the same location exactly one day earlier and partially destroyed the front of a pizzeria next door  (read more and see video of the accident in the NY Daily News).

Con Edison has a duty to maintain their equipment so they are safe for New Yorkers.  The NYC explosion attorneys at our firm have not only been prosecuting explosion accidents for year but they also have been teaching other lawyers how to handle such cases.

Recently our NYC burn injury attorneys obtained  a $ 59.2 Million verdict for Alonzo Yanes, a 16 year old boy who sustained critical burns in an explosion that occurred during a chemistry class. A negligent teacher didn’t take the appropriate precautions when conducting an experiment and Alonso was engulfed in a fireball and literally burned alive. The city attempted to reduce the verdict and filed a motion to toss or reduce the verdict but was unsuccessful.  Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Alexander Tisch wrote a decision upholding the jury’s verdict  saying that the verdict was appropriate as “Mr. Yanes was subjected to literally being burned alive.”