Columbia Gas Was Slow To Respond To 2012 Explosion In WV

NORTH ANDOVER, MA -- Sutton District Fire Chief Jim Galanos arrived in the Merrimack Valley at 6:15 am Friday, one of hundreds of firefighters to offer mutual aid to Lawrence, Andover and North Andover after a series of explosions and fires rocked the communities Thursday afternoon and evening. It didn't take long for Galanos to ask the question on the minds of thousands of residents in the region.

"Who's gonna pay for all this?" Galanos said.

Columbia Gas, the utility that provides gas service to 50,000 customers in the three towns, has had little to say. Officials believe it will take weeks to determine the exact cause of the explosions that caused more than 60 house fires, but the dominant theory is that work to upgrade the utility's main transmission line led to an over-pressurization in residential gas lines, and that fires were ignited when people returning from work turned on electrical appliances.

The end result was one death, at least two dozen injuries and millions of dollars in property damage in Lawrence, North Andover and Andover. Added to that is the lost economic activity when businesses were forced to close and residents forced to evacuate. Residents and officials began to put the blame on the company.

"Someone screwed up and blew up the neighborhood," Andover resident Don Bradley said Friday morning.

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In April, Columbia went before the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities to request permission to raise rates by $44.5 million. Columbia Gas President Stephen Bryant testified that the company needed the rate hike for operating and maintenance costs. The costs were the result of "increasingly stringent federal and state [safety] regulations," he said, according to a transcript of the hearing. Columbia ultimately agreed to a $33.2 million rate hike for 321,000 customers after reaching a settlement with Attorney General Maura Healy.

It's not the first time Columbia has been eyed as the cause of a major gas explosion. In 2012, Columbia's parent corporation, Indiana-based NiSource, was blamed by federal investigators in a pipeline rupture in Sissonville, WV. That blast destroyed three homes, damaged several others and caused major structural damage to an interstate highway.

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"It took the pipeline controller more than 10 minutes to recognize that a rupture had occurred despite the series of alerts he was receiving that indicated that the pressure in the pipeline had begun to decay," the NTSB said in its report on the disaster. “The shutdown was only initiated after a controller from another pipeline company reported a possible rupture.”

Those delays led to the release of more gas that caused more property damage. The pipeline in that incident also did not have automatic shutoff valves that would have activated once the fire started.

At a news conference Friday morning, Kurt N. Schwartz of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said Columbia Gas officials were on the scene and would speak to the media separately on Friday.

"You are going to hear from them," he said. "I'm not going to speak further to the issue."

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will lead the federal investigation, while MEMA and the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities will lead the state-level investigations.

U.S. Sen. Elzabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Seth Mouton (D-MA) both demanded the utility be held accountable.

"This is a corporation that failed its customers and let one person die," Moulton said in an interview with WBZ. "People need to feel safe in their homes...And right now the people of Andover, North Andover and Lawrence don't feel safe in their homes."

"I just think it's a mistake not to talk to people and not let them know what you know," Warren said. "When you feel like you're trying to pry information out of folks, that's a [problem]."

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Photos by Mike Carraggi/Patch.

Mike Carraggi/Patch contributed to this report. Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).