Tulsa, OK-based Oneok Inc. said Tuesday it has reached an agreement to settle a lawsuit that was brought by the family of an elderly couple who were killed following two explosions at a Kansas storage site in early 2001.

“There has been no release of any details [of the agreement]. I don’t even know if it has been finalized yet,” Oneok spokesman Weldon Watson told NGI. John and Mary Hahn of Hutchinson, KS, both in their 60s, were killed in one of the gas explosions in January 2001. Their four children brought the multi-million-dollar lawsuit in mid-2001 against Oneok and two affiliates: Kansas Gas Service, a local distribution company based in Overland Park, KS, and Mid Continent Market Center, an intrastate pipeline.

The cause of the blasts, which are under investigation by the Kansas Department of Health and Environmental, has not been determined yet. At the time, officials suspected the fireballs were triggered by a natural gas pipe leak at Oneok’s Yaggy Field storage facility, seven miles northwest of Hutchinson and operated by Kansas Gas Service.

The first explosion on Jan. 17 leveled a downtown business and gutted another, and in the aftermath, fire officials found water and gas geysers erupting throughout the city (see Daily GPI, Jan. 29, 2001). Residents were temporarily evacuated. On the following day (Jan. 18), another blast ripped into a trailer home, where the Hahns lived.

Oneok was hit with several other lawsuits following the explosion, said Watson, but “most of them have been settled.” These were brought by affected businesses and “various groups.” The agreement with the Hahn family does not end the company’s legal exposure from the explosions, he noted, but he said “we’re toward the end” of the lawsuits.

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