BATH

A Portland law firm is preparing to sue the manager of a city duplex where a violent explosion killed a tenant last week.

Terry Garmey said Friday he’s served property owner Atlantic Townhouse Apartments, property manager Keystone Management and propane supplier Irving Oil with a notice of intent to sue.

A formal lawsuit has not begun, he said Friday.

“We’re rolling up our sleeves to get to the bottom of this, and we will,” Garmey said. “When somebody dies in their home in an explosion of this nature, you believe that this is not the way life should end.”

A pre-dawn blast Feb. 12 at 29-31 Bluff Road sent a fireball into the sky, leveling a brick duplex, jostling an entire neighborhood and hurtling debris hundreds of yards.

A tenant, Dale Fussell, 64, was killed in the explosion. The occupant of the apartment adjoining Fussell’s was not home at the time.

Garmey said he will meet with members of Fussell’s family today.

A friend of Fussell told The Times Record last week Fussell had complained of smelling gas “for weeks,” prompting property managers to install a Monitor heating device.

Danielle Pinette, property manager for Keystone Management, declined comment. “We’re still investigating,” she said Friday.

Brad Clement, outside contractor for Keystone Management, also declined to disclose whether Fussell had complained about gas fumes or — if so — whether any new equipment, including a Monitor, had been installed as a remedy.

Installation of a supplemental Monitor heater would have required tapping the building’s existing propane tanks, according to installers knowledgeable about Monitor heaters.

Clement declined to discuss whether the Monitor — if installed — had been done according to specifications, saying Thursday that questions about the cause of the explosion were “beating a dead horse.”

“Those (gas) lines are fine,” he said.

The attorney for Fussell’s family disagrees.

“We believe the Monitor heater was replaced the night before,” Garmey said. “She had complained of problems with the heater.”

Sonia Epperson of Georgia, one of Fussell’s seven children, said the family wants to find out why the accident happened, and ensure that it won’t happen to someone else, Garmey said.

Investigators have determined a leak from a broken propane line allowed gas to build up in an outside wall of the apartment next to Fussell’s, sink into a crawl space beneath both apartments, then ignite.

Propane companies add odor to the gas for a reason, Garmey said, and Fussell reported smelling something.

“How does this happen in this day and age?” he asked. “This was a bomb in the middle of a city.”

The community, meanwhile, is preparing to honor a woman who had little, and gave much.

Fussell served as a volunteer at the Neighborhood Café, which feeds the hungry.

“She was a giver,” said Kimberly Gates, who knew Fussell through her work as a cook with the Neighborhood Café at the United Church of Christ on Congress Avenue.

“She would come to the Mobile Food Truck and she would give the food to other people,” Gates said,” even though “she needed it.”

Gates said Fussell had been waiting to get a new set of teeth, and was trying to save money to move into a mobile home.

Funeral services are scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Tuesday at the United Church of Christ in Bath, followed by a Neighborhood Café meal in Fussell’s memory, from 5 to 6 p.m.

lgrard@timesrecord.com