Sanitation Districts to Settle Claims

The Orange County Sanitation Districts has agreed to settle wrongful death claims with the families of two men killed in a fire two years ago at its Huntington Beach sewage treatment plant.

Cynthia Hafif, a Claremont attorney representing the families, said that none of the parties has signed a final agreement, but that the sanitation agency has offered an undisclosed amount of money and that the families have accepted it.

Lacey Miller, 14, daughter of Robin Miller, 37, who was killed in the fire, will receive an annuity, Hafif said.

Settlements with Jackie Venezio and Andy C. Patterson, parents of Charles “Joe” Patterson, 32, who also died in the fire, and Dorothy Holm, whose husband, Richard Holm, 61, was burned in the accident, but later died of cancer, are expected to be finalized within the next two weeks, Hafif said.

Miller and Patterson, employees of an Ontario-based engineering firm that was hired by the sanitation agency to perform work at the plant, were severely burned in the Feb. 1, 1994, fire and later died of their injuries.

John J. Collins, joint chairman of the Sanitation Districts’ board of directors, said the board decided to settle because “you have the certainty of a settlement over the uncertainty of a jury trial.”

Collins added that the agency “is concerned for the people who lost their lives and their families. . . . We can’t even adequately measure or compensate for that loss of life, and that’s one of the reasons we came up with the settlement.”

The fire occurred in a sewage channel at the treatment plant at Brookhurst Street and Pacific Coast Highway while Miller and Patterson were working in a confined space installing a valve.

Collins said the cause of the fire was never determined. Hafif asserted that a spark from a chipping hammer could have ignited what she called elevated levels of oxygen in the air near where the men were working. Oxygen is used in the treatment process.