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Explosion still puzzle for
family
Year after two girls died, cause remains
unknown
By Eun Lee Koh, Globe Staff, 7/27/2003
Tara and Heath Carey wonder what they will tell their yet-to-be-born son when he
is old enough to understand what happened to his two older sisters, who died
when their home in downtown Hopkinton exploded in the early morning hours of
July 24 last year.
The discussion with the boy they plan to call
Lexington will be particularly hard, the Careys said, because they don't know
exactly what happened themselves.
The Careys and their two girls, Violet, 5, and
Iris, 4, were sleeping on the futon they shared when the apartment building at
65 Main St. exploded, apparently from a natural gas leak. The force of the
explosion blew the roof into the street, and all three floors of the house
collapsed. While Tara and Heath Carey, along with the building's eight other
residents, escaped, the two sisters, named after flowers, died in the rubble.
Tara and Heath Carey felt a mix of emotions the
night before this first anniversary, having returned from a doctor's visit to
see how the pregnancy was progressing while preparing for the vigils and
memorials that lay ahead. A lot had changed in the past year, they said, and yet
one thing remained the same.
''That moment in time, that day, it changed our
lives forever,'' Tara Carey said in a telephone interview. ''I can't wait to
have this baby and hold him and love him. But the girls are gone. Every day we
wake up, and every day we know they're not coming back.''
A year later, they feel sorrow over the loss of
their two daughters. Just last month, the couple celebrated what would have been
Iris's fifth birthday at her grave in Milford, which she shares with Violet.
They feel joy, in anticipation of Lexington, due this October, a child they said
they would not have considered having if they had not lost the girls. Heath
Carey had to undergo a reverse vasectomy last fall so the couple would be able
to have more children.
And they feel frustration that there are still
no answers as to exactly what caused the explosion that killed their daughters
and left three other families homeless.
The couple, along with family and friends, were
expected to mark the anniversary with a candlelight vigil at the site on
Thursday evening. Earlier in the day, they planned a visit to their daughters'
graves, where they would release butterflies.
''We're just shells of our former selves,''
said Cindy Germain, the girls' grandmother and Tara Carey's mother. ''Before,
the girls were our joy. We were talking and breathing and alive. Now, we're just
a bunch of adults just existing, just walking around.''
Mary Harrington, a well-known former town
official who was at the site of the explosion when it happened last summer, said
that Hopkinton residents, for the most part, have moved on. But they are
reminded of the incident when they pass the site. Residents were also reminded
last October, when four families across the street from the house that exploded
had to be evacuated because of an apparent natural gas leak. No one was injured
in that incident.
''It's right in the center of town on a
well-traveled road,'' Harrington said. ''You can't help but notice that a house
is no longer there. It's empty.''
Harrington had friends who lived in the house
long before the Careys and other families moved in, she said. It was with mixed
emotions that she watched the remnants of the building being hauled away, she
said. Harrington, who recently stepped down from the Zoning Board of Appeals,
was on the board in April when it granted the owner, Leonard Pearson, a special
permit to rebuild another four-unit apartment building on the site.
Still, a year later, officials have not
pinpointed the cause of the explosion. The Careys filed a lawsuit in October
alleging that Pearson, the NStar Gas Co., and the Inner-Tite Corp. failed to
ensure that the natural gas system at the house worked properly. The suit is
pending.
''The worst part is not knowing why,'' Germain
said. ''Why are my granddaughters gone? Why?''
State Fire Marshal Stephen D. Coan, whose
office is working with the state Department of Telecommunications and Energy,
said tests are still being conducted on debris from the site.
''There's a level of frustration on our part
that it's been a year and we have not come up with answers yet,'' Coan said.
''But it is an ongoing investigation. It is an active investigation, and we're
working toward finding those answers.''
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