Six Firms Sued By Wisconsin City Over Gas Explosion Damage

The city of Sun Prairie filed a lawsuit Friday against two communications contractors, an underground utility locating service and a gas utility over the July 10 explosion that killed a firefighter and leveled several buildings in the city’s downtown. The lawsuit filed in Dane County Circuit Court, which seeks unspecified damages and costs, alleges that Bear Communications, of Lawrence, Kansas, and VC Tech, of Ypsilanti, Michigan, were negligent in failing to locate a gas service line before undertaking a project to bury fiber-optic cable for Verizon near the intersection of Main and Bristol streets.