Damage raised terrorism fears
Lawrence electrician Matt Van Dyke was home sick yesterday. When he took his pit bulls, Mama and Ted, out late yesterday afternoon he heard an explosion that sounded like a “bomb went off.”
The house three doors down on Chickering Road, had exploded.
“I ran down the street and saw the house. I could not believe it,” Van Dyke said last night while sitting in the cafeteria of Arlington Middle School, which the city set up as an evacuation shelter. “It was crazy. It was leveled. I saw a couple people coming out of there — I believe. They were all hobbling. They were messed up.”
Van Dyke, 33, said he ran toward the house but another neighbor yelled at him to “back up, back up.” The cops arrived quickly, he said.
Then, Van Dyke walked up a side street and saw another house around the corner on fire. He feared his house was going to explode.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” Van Dyke said. “It’s craziness. Absolutely insane.”
Van Dyke went back to his house and got his father, John, a wheelchairbound quadriplegic, outside to safety. Van Dyke then brought his dogs to his mother’s house. On the drive back, he saw fires across the city and feared a terrorist attack.
“What is going on? Why are we under attack? Why would Lawrence be under attack?” Van Dyke thought.
John Van Dyke, 63, was looking out the window when he saw the house explode.
“It looked like the whole front just blew out into the street. The noise was pretty eye opening. Worse than any fireworks,” John Van Dyke said. “I was just hoping there weren’t any more.”
The father and son don’t have a van to transport John so they took a city bus to the shelter, where they were looking for a place to bring his father. “He can’t stay in the chair. He’ll get bed sores. He needs a bed,” Matt Van Dyke said. “It’s a nightmare. Absolute chaos. We have places we can go. There’s no way of getting him into the house. His house is all equipped for this.”