Metro

Con Ed customers could pay for ’08 death blast

Con Ed customers could be slapped with part of the bill for a horrific 2008 gas explosion that killed a Queens man and left his daughter needing medical care for the rest of her life.

The family of Edgar Zaldumbide won a whopping $20 million settlement with Con Ed over the blast, according to documents obtained by The Post.

The settlement — nearly all of which is compensation for the terrible injuries suffered by Zaldumbide’s daughter Melissa — is mostly covered by insurance, Con Ed says.

But some of the money could come out of rate-payers’ pockets.

Con Ed is within its rights to ask the state Public Service Commission to charge its gas customers for the deductible, which is the part of the settlement not covered by insurance.

The company could make such a request in October, when it’s due to file for a gas rate increase that would take effect late in 2013.

“Deductibles are sometimes recovered in rate cases,” Con Ed said in a statement. “But to date there has been no charge to rate payers for this settlement.”

The Public Service Commission is likely to cast a wary eye on any Con Ed request to charge its gas customers in the Zaldumbide case.

When the PSC fined Con Ed $1.5 million for its bungling of the July 25, 2008 blast last year, it made sure the money would come from Con Ed’s profit margin, rather than from direct charges to its customers.

Zaldumbide, 43, was trying to light the pilot on his stove when he set off the explosion that ripped through his building Sanford Avenue in Flushing, just minutes after a Con Ed crew had restored gas service.

The Ecuadorian immigrant and his daughter Melissa, then 2 years old, were horribly burned.

Zaldumbide died after 11 weeks in the hospital. Melissa, now 5, was hospitalized for two months, and will need treatment for the rest of her life for burns that covered 35 percent of her body, court documents say.

Melissa Zaldumbide will get the lion’s share of the $20 million settlement in periodic payments over several decades.

The family’s lawyers were allotted a $6 million share of the settlement, which was finalized in January.

New details of Con Ed’s handling of the blast emerged last week in a state Inspector General report that said PSC staffers wrongly shared confidential details of the blast probe with a Con Ed consultant.

Con Ed’s failure to follow safety procedures when it turned on the building’s gas was a cause of the blast, PSC probers determined early on in their investigation.

They shared a secret draft of their findings with Con Ed consultant Mario Martello, a 73-year-old retired PSC employee who early in his career worked on Con Ed’s gas system.

Martello tried to get investigators to rewrite the report and include a statement that Con Ed’s failure to follow procedures “was not contributory to the incident.”

Ultimately Martello’s rewrites were not adopted. Martello declined last week to discuss the case.

One of the PSC employees who shared documents with Martello resigned; the other is fighting disciplinary charges.

Additional reporting by Christina Carrega and Lorena Mongelli