@PopularMechanics _ June 2019 79tion crew mills around a hole in the road. A goateed worker in a hard
hat says he “isn’t at liberty to say” what, precisely, they are doing.
“You need to talk to a Columbia Gas coordinator,” he says. Colum-
bia Gas has hired 1,300 employees from around the country and is
housing them on a cruise ship in Boston Harbor.
Is it true that the company might not actually replace the
cast-iron pipes? That they might instead (as at least one expert
suggested) use them as sleeves for new plastic pipes that are small
enough to slip inside? It’s a tried-and-true method of upgrading
pipeline, and it would not only be faster, but cheaper.
“We don’t even know,” the worker acknowledges. “It’s changing
from day to day. But—”
He mimes zipping his lip.
By October 30, three weeks ahead of schedule, Columbia Gas has
replaced all forty-five miles of cast-iron pipeline. But because of severe
delays in reconnecting individual service lines, the company still has
no way of safely getting gas to 93 percent of their affected customers.
It will take until the middle of December to fully restore the system.
In response to questions from Popular Mechanics, Columbia Gas
spokesman Dean Lieberman provided this statement: “As a party to
the Nationa l Transpor tation Safet y Board (NTSB) investigation, we
are prohibited from discussing the cause of the event or NTSB inves-
tigative information related to it until the NTSB has completed its
work, and a number of your questions touch on these issues. We are
working diligently to get the root cause so something like this won’t
happen again. The company’s top priority is enhancing pipeline
safety, and that is a continuous, ongoing effort that guides all of our
actions. Ever since the tragic event of September 13, we have been
taking tangible and forward-looking safety steps, including install-
ing automatic shut-off devices and enhanced monitoring capabilities
on all our low-pressure systems.”
In addition, Columbia Gas has updated its website to include
information on safety steps being implemented across its low-pres-
sure systems.
As for Feeney Brothers, spokesperson Nancy Sterling says: “The
NTSB’s preliminary report on the cause of the tragedy in the Merri-
mack Valley confirms Feeney Brothers’ prior statement on September
- On September 13, our crew was performing a low-pressure main
tie-in of the new plastic gas main to the existing, low-pressure gas
main on Salem Street at South Union Street. All of Feeney Brothers’
work was done with Columbia Gas’ on-site supervision and accord-
ing to written procedures provided to our crew by Columbia Gas, as
confirmed in the report.”
We d ne s d ay, S ept emb er 19
Church of St. Mar y of the Assumption,
Lawrence
10 A.M.
ST. MARY’S IS A VAST, dim space dating to 1871, eighteen years
after the City of Lawrence was chartered. Standing before an
altar decorated in white, green, gold, and sky blue, the Reverend
John Dello Russo addresses an audience of some 300 people. “Last
Thursday afternoon,” he says, moving easily between Spanish and
English, “all hell broke out across the city. And as the news went out
to his family, there was shock. Sorrow.”
Leonel’s coffin rests between the rows of pews, beneath a pall so
white it’s almost blue.
Against the high, echoing ceiling of the church, the smallest sounds
are magnified—the creaking of the battered pews, the rustling of
paper, stifled sobs. The architecture of a church not only dazzles with
divine majesty, but also loads the senses to the point of spilling over.
“The cries of his mother,” Dello Russo says. “ ‘Why my son?’ The
questions from all of us. Such a future ahead of him!”
Many mourners wear T-shirts printed with the words “RIP
Leonel” and a picture of him. Someone had given one to Leonel’s
mother, who slipped it on over her white blouse: her son, looking
intensely serious in a two-tone polo shirt with a Dominican flag in
the background. “It’s Leonel’s world,” reads another T-shirt that
had been made for the funeral: “We’re just living in it.”
Leonel’s cousin, Leomary Colon, stands at the pulpit. Three years
earlier, she says, she had been the only senior at a freshman dance at
Greater Lawrence Technical School. She wasn’t having a good time;
she’d felt awkward. So she asked Leonel to dance with her, and of
course he said yes. “He took care of everyone,” she says. Every time
he saw her, he’d say, “Be safe!”
But a remark he made to her that night stayed in her mind. It had
seemed too mature, coming from her little cousin. Almost ominous.
But it also consoles her today, because it means Leonel had consciously
been trying, until the very end, to do as much as he could with the time
he had. “You got to live it,” Leonel told her at the dance, “until it’s gone.”
If someone asks you to dance, say yes.September 26
St. Mary’s Cemetery, Lawrence
GO PAST THE BIG ‘N’ BEEFY, whose sign adver tises “Eg g Sandw ich
200,” no decimal. Past Broadway Liquors, past auto-body shops and
beauty-supply stores, like Garcia’s, whose doorway is flanked by two
long windows filled with bewigged mannequin heads.
Just before you reach the old Arlington Mills building, a brick
colossus now housing an occupational-training school, turn left
onto a gravel road that takes you to the foot of a broad green rise.
It’s the largest expanse of open space in Lawrence, the site of both
the city’s reservoir and three sprawling cemeteries dating to the
nineteenth century.
It feels like countryside up here. Two lanes cutting through park-
land, the city suddenly gone, its former citizens all around you in
their terraces of graves. An anthology of immigration: Irish and Ger-
man, French Canadian and Syrian, Puerto Rican and Dominican.
A small outbuilding with digging equipment parked outside.
Then, just before the Methuen border, St. Mary’s Cemetery.
It’s been a week since the funeral. The plot, numbered SM-H-
237, is still unmarked. It froths with flowers and colored ribbons,
a wild profusion that has been neatly tucked into the boundaries of
the rectangle—a barely contained scream of anguish. At the foot of
the grave there are four votive candles, along with messages, still leg-
ible. A white ribbon around a cluster of white flowers reads “Cargo
Express Corp.” in gold pen. A bouquet of pink and white chrysan-
themums is bound by a yellow ribbon that has carefully been signed
“Chappy y Naty” in black Magic Marker.
Nearby there are stands of elm trees, a weeping willow. In the
distance, gray and brown headstones climb the rising landscape
in ranks to a graphite horizon.
Of the million ways a parent is completely unprepared for the
death of a child, this one must be among the most terrible. In the
midst of a grief that blots out every other sensation and emotion,
you have to pick out a grave site. How are you supposed to do that?
What kind of a grave would have appealed to an eighteen-year-old
boy who liked BMWs, the Red Sox, and Abercrombie cologne? The
cemetery director presents you with a map of available plots, and
you wa lk over, wondering what you’re supposed to feel to know this
is the right one. Would he have liked the view? What will it be like
to visit this place every week for the rest of your life?January 20, 2019
11 Herrick Road, North Andover
2:15 P.M.
IN A BURNED-OUT HOUSE, there is no light, even in midafternoon.
No humming refrigerator or clicking furnace. No odor but soot and