Fitchburg, MA- FITCHBURG, Mass. Three families displaced by a natural gas explosion Tuesday night at the nearby Victory Auto Parts are not expected to be allowed back in their homes until sometime next week, the building inspector said Wednesday. Meanwhile, the gas company says the area is now safe.
The state fire marshal’s office ruled that the explosion Tuesday at 214 Lunenburg St. was caused by an accidental leak from a natural gas pipeline. The explosion, which occurred shortly after 5 p.m., shook homes and business in the densely populated area.
The explosion destroyed the office of the auto parts store, shattered windows and doors, and sent debris flying at the auto parts store, which officials said is a total loss.
The three families live in two buildings near the auto parts store that were damaged by the explosion. The building inspector said the two buildings need to be inspected and repairs may need to be done before residents can return.
Witnesses said they could see a ball of fire coming from the ground at the office of Victory Auto Parts.
No injuries were reported.
Deputy Fire Chief Brian Belliveau said a failure in the natural gas pipeline resulted in a leak leading into the building, and a buildup of natural gas came in contact with an ignition source, possibly an oil burner, causing the explosion.
Deputy Fire Chief Belliveau said Victory Auto Parts originally had a gas hook up but the owners, John I. and Nacy J. Tate, converted to oil. Deputy Fire Chief Belliveau said Mr. Tate and a customer, who were inside the business at the time of the incident, did not smell gas before the explosion.
“In this case, the pipe went into the basement even though there is no more gas usage in the building,” Deputy Fire Chief Belliveau said. “The gas went into the basement and filled up to an explosive level.”
Alec S. O’Meara, media relations manager at Unitil, which owns the gas lines, said the company has pinpointed the source of the leak.
“A leak was found on the main (at the junction of Lunenburg and Linwood streets), and that leak was on the Linwood Street piece of the pipe, and that was what was isolated last night,” Mr. O’Meara said. “Since then we have been doing leak survey work to determine if there are any additional leaks. And we have confirmed the area is safe.”
Mr. O’Meara said Unitil does regular sweeps of its infrastructure to look for potential gas leaks, including the area where the leak occurred, during the winter.
“Right now, our focus is on public safety and we are working with the first responders,” Mr. O’Meara said.
Mr. O’Meara said Unitil made initial contact with the displaced families Tuesday night, making sure they had food and shelter. The company remained in close contact Wednesday with the American Red Cross to make sure those families’ needs were being met, Mr. O’Meara said.
Those who were displaced are two adults living at 204 Lunenburg St. and two families, one consisting of three adults and a child and the other of four adults, at 5 Linwood St., according to Suzanne M. Billings, manager of disaster resiliency at the American Red Cross for Central Massachusetts.
“The families are doing fine,” Ms. Billings said. “We’ll continue to help them if we need to in regards of shelter, resources and referrals.”
Fitchburg Building Inspector Robert Lanciani said the owners of 204 Lunenburg St. said it would be at least a couple of days before an engineer is able to inspect their house. He had not heard yet from the landlord of 5 Linwood St. on when that property will be inspected.
“The owners of both properties need to have their own engineers to come in and do an inspection, an evaluation, and decide if the building is safe and what measures need to be taken to repair the buildings,” Mr. Lanciani said. Mr. Lanciani believes both buildings can be repaired.
“Mostly, it’s windows blown out, but the walls around the windows appear to have sustained some minor damage,” Mr. Lanciani said. “Because I don’t want to be opening walls to see how bad it really is, let the engineers do that.”
Mr. Lanciani said the owners boarded up the windows.
The Fitchburg Fire and Police departments and state police assigned to the state fire marshal’s office investigated, with help from the state Department of Public Utilities and Unitil.
Deputy Fire Chief Belliveau said the Victory Auto Parts building, which was assessed at $95,000, is a total loss. Inside, the parts store was assessed to have $500,000 in contents and merchandise.”Without any doubt, everybody is very happy with the outcome,” Deputy Fire Chief Belliveau said. “As bad as it was for the structure, there were no injuries or loss of life.”