A Moon family yesterday filed suit against Comcast, Columbia Gas Co. and two cable installation companies claiming negligence and recklessness in the gas explosion that leveled the family's home in March and injured their two children.

	Lake Fong, Post-Gazette The Rateau residence on Bertley Ridge Drive in Moon -- with children Marc, 18, and Chelsea, 14, inside -- was reduced to rubble in a gas explosion in March. Click photo for larger image.

The suit, filed in Common Pleas Court by attorneys representing Robert and Margaret Rateau and their children, claims that during the nearly two hours between the puncturing of a gas line in the home's front yard and the explosion, none of the defendants warned the two children or anyone else in the neighborhood about the gas leak.

Marc Rateau, 18, a rising high school senior, was critically injured in the blast, and is still undergoing physical therapy three days a week. His sister, Chelsea, 14, suffered less serious injuries.

The suit seeks unspecified damages from the March 16 incident.

"I've always felt this never should have happened," said Robert Rateau, during a news conference at the office of his Downtown attorney, John P. Gismondi. "The local authorities didn't give us a chance to get out."

According to Gismondi, who is co-counsel with attorney Kevin Durkin of Chicago, Comcast subcontractors were installing a high-speed Internet line in the Rateaus' front yard at 107 Bertley Ridge Drive the day of the incident. About 1:30 p.m., employees of Wellhead Production and Maintenance, using a technique called directional boring, punctured a gas line belonging to Columbia Gas.

Within several minutes of the leak, Wellhead employees contacted Conn-X, which had contracted with Comcast to install the cable. At 1:51 p.m., Conn-X called Pennsylvania One Call, a nonprofit organization that fields calls from contractors before they dig so it can advise member utilities to mark their underground lines as required by law. Conn-X had done this.

Pennsylvania One also alerts utilities when there is a possible gas leak, and contacted Columbia Gas at 1:58 p.m.

But when the Rateau children came home from school around 3 p.m., they were not told of the gas leak, Gismondi said. In fact, he said, workmen waved the two into the house.

The explosion occurred at 3:10, destroying the two-story home.

According to Gismondi, the workmen then got in their truck and left.

Chelsea Rateau told police she and her brother smelled a strange odor when they arrived home.

Neighbors said they smelled gas as early as 11:30 that morning.

Gismondi said it "is simply inexcusable" that contractors failed to tell the Rateau children, neighbors or police about the leak.

A spokesman for Columbia Gas said the company's attorneys had not seen the suit and could not comment. A two-sentence statement from Comcast declined comment. Officials with Wellhead and Conn-X could not be reached.

The suit charges that the companies were negligent in operating the drilling and boring machine, failing to determine the location of the gas line prior to drilling and failing to notify people of the punctured line "in a timely fashion."