Towns on edge after blasts
Dozens of homes set afire; neighborhoods emptied; falling chimney kills teen
LAWRENCE, Mass. — Investigators worked Friday to pinpoint the cause of a series of fiery natural gas explosions that killed a teen driver in his car just hours after he got his license, injured at least 25 others and left dozens of homes in smoldering ruins.
Authorities said an estimated 8,000 people were displaced at the height of Thursday’s post-explosion chaos in three towns north of Boston rocked by the disaster. Most were still waiting, shaken and exhausted, to be allowed to return to their homes.
Gov. Charlie Baker said Friday that hundreds of gas technicians were being deployed throughout the night and into today to make sure each home is safe to enter.
Even after residents return and their electricity is restored, gas service won’t be turned on until technicians can inspect every connection in each home — a process that could take weeks.
“This remains a tremendous inconvenience for many people,” Baker said. “It’s essential for the crews to get this right.”
The National Transportation Safety Board sent a team to help investigate the blasts in a state where some of the aging gas pipeline system dates to the 1860s.
The rapid-fire series of gas explosions that one official described as “Armageddon” ignited fires in 60 to 80 homes in the working-class towns of Lawrence, Andover and North Andover, forcing entire neighborhoods to evacuate as crews scrambled to fight the flames and shut off the gas and electricity.
Gas and electricity remained shut down Friday in most of the area, and entire neighborhoods were deserted.
Authorities said Leonel Rondon, 18, of Lawrence, died after a chimney toppled by an exploding house crashed into his car. He was rushed to a Boston hospital and pronounced dead Thursday evening.
Rondon, a musician who went by the name DJ Blaze, had just gotten his driver’s license, grieving friends and relatives told The Boston Globe. “It’s crazy how this happened,” said a friend, Cassandra Carrion.
The state Registry of Motor Vehicles said Rondon had been issued his driver’s license only hours earlier Thursday.
Massachusetts State Police urged all residents with homes serviced by Columbia Gas in the three communities to evacuate, snarling traffic and causing widespread confusion as residents and local officials struggled to understand what was happening. Some 400 people spent the night in shelters, and school was canceled Friday as families waited to return to their homes.
The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency blamed the fires on gas lines that had become over-pressurized but said investigators were still examining what happened.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton tweeted that he had called the utility’s president several times with no response. “Everyone wants answers. And we deserve them,” Moulton said.
Columbia Gas President Steve Bryant wouldn’t comment on the suspected cause of the blasts, deflecting questions about his company’s response but saying it had “substantive, lengthy conversations” with the authorities.
The Massachusetts gas pipeline system is among the oldest in the country, as much as 157 years old in some places, according to the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental advocacy group.
Earlier Thursday, Columbia Gas had announced that it would be upgrading gas lines in neighborhoods across the state, including the area where the explosions happened. It was not clear whether work was happening there Thursday, and a spokesman did not return calls seeking comment.
U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey said they are calling on the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to hold a hearing to determine what went wrong and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Authorities said all of the fires had been extinguished overnight and the situation was stabilizing.
Columbia Gas has been fined $100,000 by the state for a variety of safety violations since 2010, including $35,000 in 2016 for failing to follow company and pipeline safety regulations when responding to a service interruption and repairing a leak in Taunton.
The company was sued in 2014 after a strip club was destroyed in a natural gas explosion in Springfield, Mass., after a Columbia employee accidentally punctured a gas line while probing for a leak. The November 2012 blast leveled the Scores Gentleman’s Club, injuring about 20 people and damaging dozens of other buildings. The club owner and the gas company eventually settled the case.