Some relief as gas co. puts families in hotels
Will pay until service restored
Yohanny Cespedes of Lawrence just couldn’t take it any longer.
She was fed up with cooking meals in a microwave instead of on her gas stove. She was tired of bathing her three young daughters by warming a pot of water on a hot plate. She was sick of being cold in her home three weeks after gas explosions rocked the Merrimack Valley.
When Cespedes’ 9-month-old baby, Kianny Rivera caught a cold from staying in their chilly house, that was the last straw. She wanted to stay in a hotel, so she called Columbia Gas yesterday to complain.
“I fought. I was fighting with them. I told them, ‘If anything happens, you’re going to be sorry,’” said Cespedes. She said her house had become dangerous after she bought a propane stove.
“Kianny was walking around it and she almost burned herself,” said Cespedes.
Cespedes and her husband, along with their three children, Kianny, 4-year-old Kylee Rivera and Kourtney Rivera, who turns 7 today, checked into a hotel in Salem, N.H., last night and will stay there until service is restored to their home.
They are now among the 321 families who are staying in hotels on Columbia Gas’ dime. According to Ken Stammens, spokesman for Columbia Gas, the company started offering alternative housing options to families yesterday morning.
He said area hotels will bill Columbia Gas directly so families will not have to put up their own cash and go through a reimbursement process.
When Cespedes got the call that she could check into a hotel, she told the Herald she was “so excited.”
“I was thinking yes, finally, we’re going to be warm and we can take nice showers,” said Cespedes, who had been bouncing back and forth between her mother’s house in North Lawrence to warm up and cook meals and her home.
Cespedes, a small-business owner, said the financial toll of not having gas was starting to weigh on her. She said within the past week, she has spent about $100 on take-out for her family and $50 to purchase the propane stove.
As previously reported in the Herald, Columbia Gas workers and employees are being housed in area hotels to continue restoration work. However, in an effort to free up hotel space, the workers will soon stay on a Bahamas Paradise Cruise ship that is being sent up to Boston.
The roughly 8,000 households in the affected area in south Lawrence, North Andover and Andover still face up to a month and a half of uncertainty. Columbia Gas’ plans call for all services to be restored by Nov. 19.