FRAMINGHAM -- A gray cloud seeped from an opening less than a foot from Robert Graham with a loud "shhh" sound, like a huge balloon quickly losing air and about to pop.
     "Get out! Get out!" yelled an NStar supervisor, holding the pipe wrench he was about to use to shut off the gas.
     "Get out! Get out!" Graham shouted to his wife, Val, who was combing her hair upstairs in the bedroom of the split-level ranch.
     Fumes quickly engulfed the basement, giving off a strong odor. Within seconds, the pilot light on the hot water heater detonated the air, violently rocking the home at 9 Bonito Drive.
     The front door buckled. Windows popped. Flames and smoke from the basement shot up. There was yelling, with more frantic screams.
     "I don't recall going up the steps that fast in my life," said Robert, recalling the powerful winds that pushed his body.
     "My neighbor said I looked like Superman or something (coming through the front door)," said Valerie. "I jumped over it and landed on my knees and still heard, 'Get away from the house. Get away from the house.'"
     The couple and their daughter Tisha, home from college and sleeping -- thinking it was a dream as her bed shook -- lived to tell the story of that fateful moment: 8:20 a.m., May 24, 2002. Their son Aaron, then 16, whose bedroom was in the basement, and their foster son, were in school at the time.
     Two years later, the house, located behind Framingham High School, is empty and boarded up, awaiting demolition that will include the cracked foundation this month. The couple wants to rebuild the same style on the same plot, but don't have nearly enough money.
     They want NStar to help.
     "We want them to make us whole," said Valerie, a manager with the Department of Social Services. "That's the bottom line. We're not asking for any more or any less. We're asking them to make us whole."
     The explosion was caused by a backhoe operator from Pipeline Equipment and Supply in Woburn, who accidentally pulled the underground gas line, ripping it off the house.
     The company, hired by NStar to connect homes to a new 4-inch gas main, is now defunct.
     "It's only reasonable, because it was their fault," said Robert Graham. "We had nothing to do with this. We were minding our own business."
     So far, NStar has been silent.
     "This matter has been referred to their attorney," Christina McKenna, NStar's director of media relations, said this week. "Under those circumstances it would be inappropriate for me to discuss it."
     Pipeline Equipment and Supply was fined $500, the maximum allowed for a first offense, by the Department of Telecommunications and Energy for violation of the Dig Safe Law. NStar, a repeat offender, was fined $3,000 for the same violation, according to Christopher Bourne, acting director of the pipeline engineering and safety division of DTE.
     Bourne, reviewing the incident report filed last year, said the backhoe operator thought the service line was 4 feet deep, but at the dig point at the edge of the sidewalk and lawn it crossed over a storm drain, and was shallower.
     Five months ago, the utility company told the Grahams that company lawyers would be in contact with them. The couple is still waiting. Last month, the Grahams' attorneys, Sandy T. Botelho and Denzil McKenzie of McKenzie & Associates, sent NStar a demand letter, giving it 30 days, until July 23, to provide a settlement offer.
     "The law we proceed with requires us to give the other side an opportunity to make good and that's all we're doing," said McKenzie, explaining why his clients don't just sue. "If they elect to forgo their opportunity to make good on their negligent conduct, then we'll certainly pursue the available legal remedies under Massachusetts laws."
     The demand letter cites the Consumer Protection Act, state laws, the section that pertains to unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade. Failure to comply could subject NStar to triple damages, attorney fees and other legal costs.
     McKenzie said it shouldn't take NStar long to come up with a figure to pay his clients.
     "It just takes the will to write a check," he said.
     The utility has washed its hands of responsibility, the couple argues, and now that the TV cameras are gone, left the family high and dry.
     "The public needs to know, despite the good corporate image NStar is portraying, that at the end of the day it is not a true image," said McKenzie. "They cause damage and will simply drag their feet...it's inviting a fight with my clients."
     The explosion occurred two months to the day before a deadly gas explosion in downtown Hopkinton leveled an apartment building, killing the Carey sisters, Iris, 4, and Violet, 5.
     Though no clear cause has been identified for that blast, a 2003 report by the DTE suggested NStar may have violated state and federal regulations by not properly inspecting and maintaining gas lines.
     The Grahams rent a home in Saxonville, about two miles away from their damaged house. They settled with their insurance company seven months after the explosion.
     It was a meager amount, they say, compared to the cost of replacing their $300,000 home, the contents, and to pay for living expenses.
     Last year, Robert Graham, a materials management consultant, lost his job when his employer, Genuity Inc., of Woburn went bankrupt. He was unemployed for three months, before finding a contract job in Connecticut.
     Adding to their woes, the couple's insurance company stopped reimbursing them for rent a year ago, claiming the Grahams missed a premium, a fact they dispute. They think the insurance company cut them off because they were moving too slowly to tear the house down and rebuild.
     So for months, they've paid rent and mortgage on a home that could not be occupied.
     To make ends meet, Robert cashed in part of his IRA. They've had to borrow from family and friends. Valerie's mother loaned them cash to tear the house down.
     "At this point, we'll probably end up having to cash in some more retirement assets that we hadn't planned to use," Robert said.
     The explosion and ensuing fire damaged all three levels of the house. The heat was so intense, the nails in the master bedroom -- the room furthest away from the fire -- started pulling away from the sheet rock.
     "Anything that wasn't burned outright was either water, heat or smoke damage," said Robert, who took photographs of the inside on the day of the fire. "Nothing was untouched in the house."
     The family lost photos of their kids growing up, Christmas ornaments the children made for the tree each year and prized African wood carvings that hung on the living room walls. The handmade quilt Robert's grandmother gave to him before she died is gone. One pair of boots and a box of things they have yet to scrounge through was all that could be salvaged.
     The days and weeks following the explosion, NStar treated the family with kid-glove care.
     The couple said that Joseph Nolan, NStar's vice president of customer and corporate relations, was on the scene within a half hour of the blast.
     "In fact, he pulled out a wad of money. He said, 'You need food.' He said, 'I'll get one of my assistants to come shop with you guys.' He was very nice."
     The family lived in a suite at the Residence Inn in Natick for a month. The hotel, food, clothing and other expenses came from NStar's accounts.
     "What we heard was, 'We're going to take care of you. We're going to give you whatever you need,'" recalled Valerie.
     "You can be sure of one thing, the family will be taken care of," NStar's spokesman Mike Monahan told the MetroWest Daily News at the time.
     Since the explosion, the Grahams have had little interaction with NStar.
     Almost a year after the fire, NStar sent them an erroneous $1,000 bill for missing payments on their monthly payment plan.
     "Val went livid," said Robert. "We called customer service and said you guys blew up the house. Why are you still billing us and that didn't do any good so I called Nolan...He basically took care of it. He said, 'I'm very sorry.'"
     Last February, McKenzie & Associates sent NStar a letter detailing the estimated cost for the Grahams to replace their house, minus what the insurance company paid. When NStar failed to respond, attorney Botelho asked the Grahams to call Nolan directly.
     "So we called him and he gave us the name of the lawyer that he had passed the letter on to," said Robert. "And at that point his attitude had changed 180 degrees. He was cold and distant."
     "He put us on hold for 10 minutes and I'm sure he put us on hold to call this attorney. He came back on and basically said that we misunderstood what he had said," said Valerie.
     The couple was told not to call Nolan again, they said.
     "They're ignoring us," Valerie added, leaning on the edge of a chair, showing emotion during an interview. "We're tired. We want NStar to do the right thing and we finally realized the only way they're going to do it is if (they're pressured by) the court of public opinion."
     "They're not even inviting us to the table," said Robert, who has been so stressed, his doctor quadrupled his blood pressure medicine.
     "I don't know what they're thinking but to destroy a family's life, not to think that you're responsible for it when your agents cause this is unconscionable."