State Rep. Jessica Gonzalez is calling for a state review after residents of the Bonnie Apartments in Oak Cliff have gone more than two months without natural gas service following a nearby explosion.<\/p>\n
The apartment complex is located within Gonzalez’s legislative district. She said she wants to determine what happened and identify ways to better protect residents in the future.<\/p>\n
“I want them to review everything that happened and see if we can find some solutions prior to the next legislative session starting, “Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n
Gonzalez has sent a letter to the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs requesting a review of the apartment building and the emergency response provided by the city of Dallas.<\/p>\n
“To make sure that residents in the future have protections and aren’t left in limbo for more than two months without having access to their natural gas,” Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n
For weeks, NBC 5 has spoken with residents who said they feel they have fallen through the cracks as they continue living without gas service.<\/p>\n
“We gotta take cold showers, I might want to fix something on my oven and I can’t do it,” a resident said. “Ain’t nobody said nothing about we’re gonna fix y’all’s gas. Ain’t nobody doing anything about it.”<\/p>\n
NBC 5’s calls seeking comment from the property’s owners and management company have gone unanswered.<\/p>\n
However, documents show the owners, listed as Sir Jullian LLC and Samuel Alflalo, have sued Atmos.<\/p>\n
As that litigation moves through the court system, Gonzalez said residents need immediate solutions:<\/p>\n
“They don’t have any answers at all. They’re being told for their safety they should not still be in the building, but some folks don’t have other options right now,” Gonzalez said. “And the moving process isn’t cheap often times. Having to deal with filling out applications, getting those applications accepted. Some people may not even have vehicles to move their things to a new location.”<\/p>\n
Gonzalez’s letter also raises questions about Atmos’ infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Atmos Energy told NBC 5 that a gas line not owned by Atmos must be repaired before natural gas service can be restored.<\/p>\n
“We’re continuing to try to find as many answers as we can that haven’t been answered in regards to a variety of things whether it’s on the state level or having conversations with folks from the community,” Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC DFW. AI tools helped convert the story into a digital article, and an NBC DFW journalist edited it again before publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State Rep. Jessica Gonzalez is calling for a state review after residents of the Bonnie Apartments in Oak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":["post-393466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}