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A Texas jury awarded $82.5 million in damages to the family of a man who died in a 2007 explosion at Houston-based Hanover Compressions L.P., a natural gas processing plant in Hood County. The company, which has since been renamed Exterran Energy Solutions L.P., constructed, engineered and installed the natural gas processing plant that the jury said was grossly negligent in the death of 27-year-old Joshua Wade Petrie, an employee of Fort Worth, Texas-based Quicksilver. Gas workers have enough risks…

Pablo Garcia, a 53-year-old longshoreman from Lakewood, CA, was struck and killed as he worked at Terminal Island in Long Beach, California last month. This marks the third such fatality in local ports since April of 2008. The Saturday evening death at the Evergreen facility again broaches the issues of safety and on local docks. Local Long Beach officials reportedly are pressing for vehicular manslaughter charges against another longshoreman who plowed his yard tractor – allegedly drunk – into trucker…

The employers of a dockworker’s family, Virginia International Terminals Inc., has agreed to pay that family $500,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the surviving family members of a port worker killed at Portsmouth Marine Terminal in 2007, reports say. The estate of Vernon Leroy White Jr. alleged negligence on the part of Virginia International Terminals and two workers after White was crushed to death when a cargo container crushed him. White, 42, was survived by a son and daughter,…

A two-year-old child almost drowned in a backyard pool earlier this month as the mother’s boyfriend, who was watching the infant at the time, walked away to talk on his cell phone, reports say. The near drowning accident occurred in Clay Township, IN, police said, in a small plastic inflatable, above-ground pool. The toddler was left alone for just an instant and when the mother walked outside to check on him, the youngster was face-down in the pool. The child, reported…

A 16-year-old Huntington Beach girl is recovering in the hospital after nearly drowning while drinking alcohol in an apartment complex pool, say reports. The pool accident occurred earlier this month at the Ocean Air Apartment Homes, a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean. The girl had apparently slipped into the water and lost consciousness – either from alcohol or from an inability to swim or both. Reports say friends saw her and pulled her out of the water. One of…