‘We want to feel safe in our homes’
NORTH ANDOVER — It won’t be simple or easy for the residents of the Merrimack Valley to move past the night when thousands of their homes suddenly became potential bombs, filled with gas ready to burst into flames.
“We want to feel safe in our homes,” a frustrated Mariska Pierce of North Andover told the Herald yesterday afternoon. “It’s supposed to be your sanctuary.”
Pierce, along with her sister Heather, daughter Sophie and hound Winnie, walked through the North Andover High School gymnasium, which served as a Red Cross disaster-relief center and shelter for people who couldn’t return home — like them.
“We just feel really displaced,” Mariska Pierce said. “It’s surreal.”
A cause-yet-to-be-determined incident involving Columbia Gas lines put more than 8,000 buildings in danger Thursday night. More than 60 caught fire and several exploded, in one case fatally. Twenty-five people in or around their homes were injured.
North Andover resident Tiffany Chasse said the previous night had been a flurry of calls and texts as everyone checked in on friends, neighbors and relatives.
“We were hearing sirens and helicopters all night,” Chasse said. “It was freaky for it to happen here.”
Bob Moverman, a North Andover resident who’s a psychologist, drove by several shelters in the area yesterday morning, checking to see if anyone needed a trained ear to help them process the horror of the previous night and the ongoing uncertainty that followed. Moverman told the Herald that incidents such as this that involve danger in someone’s home can rattle people for quite a while.
“In the hierarchy of needs, it’s one of the most basic,” Moverman said, referring to people’s homes as he stood outside North Andover High. “It kind of shakes your foundations.”
For the gas company’s part, its president, Steve Bryant, attempted to address some of these worries during a press conference in which reporters peppered him with questions about what had gone wrong and why it took nearly 24 hours for him to speak about it.
“We will be very careful, very methodical about restoring service,” Bryant said.
The Rev. Kevin Deeley of St. Michael’s Parish in North Andover remarked, as many residents did, on the fear caused by the confusion and lack of definitive information that followed the fires.
“That’s the scariest part, in a way,” Deeley said.
North Andover Town Manager Andrew Maylor told the Herald it might be “10 days or more” until his suburban community is logistically back on track with all gas restored. But, Maylor said, it will take longer for the residents to shake the chaos of Thursday night and the confusion in the days that followed.
“There was tremendous uncertainty,” Maylor said. “If you’re a gas customer, there’s going to be that fear the first time you go back into your home. There can’t not be.”