GOV SENDS IN TROOPS
Homes without gas to get hot plates, heaters
State officials beginning today will hand out thousands of hot plates and space heaters to residents still without gas more than a week after dozens of fires erupted across the Merrimack Valley, but will give heaters only to residents whose homes can safely run them, a move that will mean residents must take extra precautions to avoid additional fire risk.
“We do see a number of fires each year related to space heaters, usually because they’re kept too close to something that can burn,” said Lorraine Carli, an executive with the Quincy-based National Fire Protection Association. “Make sure people are aware they have to do certain things and be a little extra careful.”
The handout comes as temperatures are expected to drop into the 40s overnight.
Gov. Charlie Baker, along with local and state officials, said yesterday the National Guard would begin handing out 7,000 new, two-burner hot plates today and 24,000 space heaters beginning Monday. Those electrical appliances are meant to hold over residents for the next two months until full gas service is restored.
Baker said licensed electricians will be going to each house to install space heaters and to ensure they can be run safely. For residents whose homes cannot support space heaters, the state will find alternate arrangements, Baker said.
The state fire marshal’s office said it has been working with the governor’s office to ensure the heaters and hot plates are as safe as possible. The relief work prompted Baker to activate the National Guard.
“It will take hundreds and probably thousands of people,” Baker said. “They say sometimes it takes an army, and in this situation couldn’t be more true.”
As residents try to get their day-to-day lives back to some semblance of normalcy, construction crews across the region will begin replacing 46 miles of pipeline damaged when the line was overpressurized. The Department of Public Utilities, under Baker’s direction, compelled Columbia Gas to bring in a third-party contractor to oversee the repair effort.
The company, Commodore Builders, will fully restore gas service to Lawrence, Andover and North Andover by Nov. 19.
Columbia Gas has been that under siege since dozens of fires, explosions and gas leaks sprung up out of nowhere in the three municipalities, and was booted from its own repair effort less than 24 hours later after Baker and Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera concluded the company was not working fast enough.
Joe Hamrock, chief executive of NiSource, Columbia Gas’s parent company, defended the company’s response. “Any incident of this magnitude with this sort of significant impact requires a large response, a large emergency response,” he said. “Everybody came together in that moment to be sure we made the communities as safe as we could in the moment.”
Also yesterday, Sens. Edward J. Markey and Elizabeth Warren sent another letter to Columbia Gas CEO Stephen Bryant, seeking information about the company’s lowpressure gas systems, as well as the work done by a contractor in the area on the day of the explosions.
National law firm Bailey & Glasser and local firm Farrah & Farrah yesterday filed a class action lawsuit alleging Columbia Gas knowingly failed to keep its gas infrastructure safe.