When the fire reached
the attic of this
apartment building, it
shot through the roof.@PopularMechanics _ June 2019 75statewide fire mobilization plan—to
send over bodies and trucks ASAP.
FLOWING AT A RATE above 1 psi, nat-
ural gas can blow out appliances and
force its way into basements, kitch-
ens, and laundry rooms. Methane
is about twice as light as dry air, so it
will drift upward until, like a balloon
against a ceiling, it bumps up against
an impassable barrier. Then it will
begin to collect.
Nothing will happen immediately,
because the methane is leaking out of
the house (which isn’t airtight) at the
same time. To compensate for this,
and to reach the concentration level
required for ignition—between 5 and
15 percent—the gas has to stream into the house at a significantly
high flow rate. It can take hours for the gas to reach that concentra-
tion level—or minutes.
What if it does?
There are so many ignition sources in an ordinary household.
All that’s required is a tiny spark—from a pilot light, or someone
turning on a burner on a stove, even a thermostat switching on.
The most powerful reactions occur if ignition takes place not at
the instant the methane level crosses 5 percent, but at the “but-
ter zone,” 9 percent.
A sphere of f lame appears. It swells rapidly to fill the space,
consuming the methane-laced air all around it. But this isn’t the
explosion; rather, it’s the detonator—for a trail of carbon dioxide
gas and water vapor heated to over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. In the
flame’s wake, these gases accelerate to extraordinary speeds, up to
two and three kilometers per second, in all directions. They will burst
through practically anything that tries to contain them—sealed
wa lls, w indows, a roof. Houses these days tend to be built, or modified,
for energy efficiency. The same insulated windows that help meth-
ane warm up your home can also help methane blow up your home.
On September 13, a house was likely to be safe only if it had been
upgraded from the low-pressure system. Upgraded service lines
had pressure-regulating valves installed on them.
A gas-valve regulator is a funny-looking little device that resem-
bles an iron UFO balanced on its edge. It’s installed on the service
line just before it reaches your meter (and your home). Inside the
valve’s disc-shaped housing, a stopper is backed by a stiff metal
coil. Gas pressures above an adjustable set pressure—typically,
1 psi—will force the stopper upward, compressing the coil and
modulating gas flow.
An excess-flow valve is installed on the service line underground,
near the line’s intersection with the gas main. The moment gas pres-
sure exceeds a certain psi, the valve slams shut.
If Columbia Gas had upgraded your street, your gas main would
be running at well above 0.5 psi. But your appliances aren’t rated
at levels higher than 1 psi, so to protect them from damage, the
company would have furnished you with a gas-valve regulator or
an excess-flow valve.
If your street’s infrastructure hadn’t been upgraded, though,
the neighborhood main was probably running at 0.5 psi, same as in
your house. But rather than issue individual safety valves to every
customer in its low-pressure network, Columbia Gas had set up
fourteen regulator stations, each one controlling gas pressure for
many customers at once. The regulator stations took their march-
ing orders from sensors like the one the contractor had just pulled
out of a trench on Salem Street.
35 Chickering Road
WHILE OMAYRA AND SHAKIRA get
dressed to go out for dinner, the
boys—Omayra’s two sons, Chris-
tian and Sergio; Leonel, hanging
around the Figueroas’ as usual; and
another friend—sit in Christian’s sil-
ver Honda CR-V, listening to music.
When you’re seventeen, eighteen,
twenty, and it’s a sunny afternoon, no
homework, just the scruffy, lazy end
of a long summer, that’s what young
men do—they sit in a guy’s car, lis-
tening to music, talking about which
girls are going to look good after three
months on the North Shore beaches,
talking about going to get a ham-
burger, talking about nothing, talking about everything.
By rights Christian sits in the driver’s seat, but Leonel asks if they
can switch places. Leonel has come to the Figueroa house directly
from the Registry of Motor Vehicles, where he picked up his driv-
er’s license, and it’s time to take the shine off of it, he says, even if
all that means is just sitting at the wheel.
Christian is protective of his car, so even though he agrees to
switch places with Leonel, he doesn’t actually move all the way
over to the passenger side. Instead, he sits watchfully on the con-
sole, while Leonel takes the driver’s seat.
Omayra goes into the second-floor bathroom and puts her phone
on the sink. In her bedroom on the first floor, Shakira plugs her
phone into its charger and plays a K-pop album so she can listen
to music while she puts on her makeup. She turns to the mirror.
The house blows up.THE IMPACT OF THE EXPLOSION throws Omayra off her feet. The
room has been turned on its side—one of its walls is now the ceil-
ing. Omayra tries to open the door, but something is blocking it.
She can hear and feel all of the alarms sounding throughout the
house. She thinks Lawrence must have been hit by an earthquake.
She yells out the names of her children; no one answers. She
pushes and pushes until she forces open the jammed door. Now she
can hear Shakira downstairs, calling for help.
Omayra yells to her daughter to get out of the house—to jump
out the window. She thinks Shakira can safely do that from her bed-
room on the first floor.
“I can’t feel my legs,” Shakira says.
What?
Omayra calls out the names of her sons: nothing. Shakira cries
out for help again.
Amid the distorted angles of the collapsed house, Omayra strug-
gles across piles of debris until she reaches what she thinks is the
second-floor hallway. When Shakira cries out a third time, Omayra
has to fling herself toward the sound of her daughter’s voice, because
the staircase is gone.
She finds Shakira lying on her back in what had been her bed-
room, trapped beneath what appears to be the collapsed door frame.
A bare bone juts from one of her legs, filthy with rubble. It isn’t white,
the way you’d think a bone would be. Omayra crouches beside her
daughter and slowly, gently, begins to clean the wound.6-8-10-12 Springfield Street
WHEN QUINN AND ANOTHER FIREFIGHTER kick in the door, they
see that the whole second floor is going. The kitchen, in the back of
the apartment, is fully involved—on fire from wall to wall. They