HOPKINTON - Investigators searching for the cause of
last week's deadly house blast plan to test the natural gas-delivery system
that served the Main Street home.
State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan said items pulled from 65 Main St. after
the explosion are housed at his Stow headquarters while state and local
police put together a testing plan.
Appliances, valves, meters, regulators and pipes were hoisted from the
basement of the shattered home in the hours after it blew up at 1:41 a.m. on
July 26.
Investigators hope the materials provide more clues than surveying the
scene and conducting interviews with witnesses, first-responders and
residents, Coan said.
"None of that has provided us with sufficient information to
determine what the cause of the explosion is," he said.
Police and firefighters first blamed the explosion on a natural gas leak.
A first-floor resident told a state police dispatcher she smelled gas and
heard a strange noise coming from the basement seconds before the house
exploded and collapsed. NStar officials say they have no record of troubles
at the four-family home.
The explosion killed Iris Carey, 4, and Violet Carey, 51/2, who lay
trapped under debris and furniture, side by side on their parents' bed. The
sisters were buried in a Milford cemetery on Monday.
The girls' parents, Tara and Heath Carey, escaped with eight others
including a pregnant woman who was due to give birth on the day of the
blast.
The woman, Poliana Campos, crawled out a window once three stories high
onto a debris-littered Main Street with her fiancee, Antonio Defreitas, and
his son, Bryan.
Campos, 21, was taken to MetroWest Medical Center for observation and
released the next day when doctors determined the fall did not harm her
fetus. As of last night, she was still waiting to deliver her son, who will
be named Ryan.
Doctors at MetroWest Medical Center had hoped to admit Campos and induce
her labor yesterday, but the hospital was too crowded, Campos and Defreitas
said. They will try again today.
Meanwhile, Coan said investigators are working on hiring consultants to
examine the gas system and its components over the next several weeks. The
National Fire Protection Agency in Quincy will help locate the experts.
Coan does not know when an official cause will be determined and reported
to the public.
"This is now a long-term project," he said. "It's not fair
to indicate a time frame."
