@PopularMechanics _ June 2019 77MAP^BYHAISAM^HUSSEINIt is too heav y.
It is only now, standing amid the
rubble on the front lawn, that Omayra
smells gas for the first time—such an
intense concentration of it that she
begins coughing and tearing up. She
vomits.
When she looks up, she sees
paramedics on the curb tending to
Christian, whose entire left side is
streaming with blood. Other para-
medics are working on Shakira on the
far side of the street. Beyond her, down
the street, Omayra sees the strangest
thing: the curtains from her daugh-
ter’s bedroom. Is that what those are?
Can’t be. They were blown by the force
of the explosion all the way to the stop
sign on Chickering Road, had to be
four hundred yards away.
It hits her now: None of the other
houses around hers are damaged.
It must not have been an earth-
quake after all. What just happened?
Sergio, her youngest, runs toward
her. “Mommy,” he says. “Leonel won’t
come out of the car. The chimney just
fell on him.”
Firefighters using pry bars are
finally able to shift the massive sec-
tion of the chimney off of Christian’s
car. They remove Leonel and imme-
diately, right there in the driveway,
paramedics begin giving him CPR.
Omay ra hugs Sergio so he won’t see.
“He’s dead, he’s dead,” Sergio
whispers.
“No, I promise, he’s okay,” Omayra
says.OFFICER SOTO CALLS his wife and daughters to make sure they
are all right. He is on foot now, supervising the evacuation of houses
nearby.
With one hand, Soto waves nervous residents away from their
homes, nodding his head as they stumble toward safety. With his
other hand, he holds his iPhone to his ear.
He stops. Cops aren’t supposed to show their emotions, but he must
be showing his, because another cop comes up to him, concerned.
“Are you okay?”
Soto says, “It just happened at my house.”All [off-duty] firefighters return to work. You’re hearing
this on the scanner, come to work. —radio announce-
ment, Chief Brian Moriarty, Lawrence Fire Department60 Jefferson Street, Lawrence
BEFORE SOTO SEES his house, he sees black smoke rising above it.
This was his family’s first real home, bought in 2015 in a neighbor-
hood called Mount Vernon. A ranch house around sixty years old, with
a bright red door and an in-ground pool. Lawrence can be a tough city,
but if you work hard and you end up in Mount Vernon? You’ve made it.
Soto’s fifteen-year-old daughter runs out of a neighbor’s house
across the street and into his arms. She is in tears, and so, for a
moment, is he. She says she felt an explosion directly below heryet the family endured. Chickering Road, this house where they
moved afterward—it was where they had started over.
She sees a jagged hole in her bedroom wall—a way outside. Sha-
kira tries to get to her feet, but she can’t feel her legs. She can’t feel
anything. Looking down at the lower half of her body, she sees the
exposed bone protruding near her right ankle.
The fire alarms won’t stop, and the noise is making her feel like
she is going insane. A fever dream. She thinks the house is going to
fall on top of her, or catch on fire. She starts yelling for her mother.
Then her mother is beside her, trying to lift her, or at least drag
her to safety. They both scream for help. A policeman appears, holds
her from the back and two firefighters hold her legs, and they carry
her across the street and put her on a stretcher. They ask her for her
name and her age.
Are these the questions they ask you when you’re dying?CROUCHED ON TOP of the hood of the SUV in the driveway, look-
ing through its windshield, Officer Soto sees that the boy’s eyes are
closed. The impact has forced him backward, with the chimney cov-
ering the lower part of his body. Soto thinks he is dead, but another
cop tells him the boy has a pulse and had been conscious a few min-
utes earlier. Soto and at least five other men grab the chimney, their
hands digging into the brick, and lift with everything they have—all
their strength, all their will, as if the whole world has been reduced to
this task. They lift like it was their own boy trapped.35 CHICKERING RD.11 HERRICK RD.60 JEFFERSON ST.6 SPRINGFIELD ST. O’Connell
CSouth ommonSOUTH
LAWRENCECONSTRUCTION SITELAWRENCEANDOVERNORTH
ANDOVERPOLICE DEPARTMENT
DUCK BRIDGE495495
ONE MILEDAMAGED HOUSE IMPACT ZONELEGENDLawrenceBostonManchesterNewtonMAConcordNHMEAREA OF
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