Crews have started cleanup at the site of the gas explosion as South Fork, which damaged or destroyed more than 50 homes. (Staff photo by Bill Sanservino.)
By Bill Sanservino
Officials continue to investigate the cause of a gas explosion in the South Fork at Ewing townhouse development in West Trenton that resulted in the death of one resident and left more than 40 families homeless.
The March 4 explosion killed Linda Cerritelli, a 62-year-old Crockett Lane resident who was working from home that day. The blast, which also injured seven utility workers, destroyed Cerritelli’s home and the adjacent units. A total of 55 homes were damaged or destroyed in the blast and ensuing fire. Six of those units were either destroyed by the explosion or damaged to the extent that they will have to be razed and totally rebuilt.
Mayor Bert Steinmann said that although the Ewing Police have concluded their investigation, the Board of Public Utilities and state attorney general are still looking into the blast.
The investigation revealed that that the explosion occurred at about 12:50 p.m. More than an hour before, workers from Henkels & McCoy, a contractor hired by PSEG, ruptured a gas main while they were conducting directional drilling outside Cerritelli’s home.
After striking the main, the workers called in a PSEG crew, which worked at the scene for about 45 minutes before the explosion occurred.
Several hours after the explosion, Cerritelli’s body was discovered on the hood of a car outside her unit, said Lt. Ron Lunetta, officer in charge of the Ewing Police. The woman’s body had been burned beyond recognition, and she was later identified through dental records.
Officials speculate that the escaping gas may have found its way into one of the homes through cracks in the shale rock upon which the homes are constructed. At that point, something in one of the units caused the gas to ignite, causing the explosion.
Cleanup crews and investigators were at the site on March 21 to try to determine the cause of the disaster. Those at the site included investigators from the state Board of Public Utilities. Also there were Raymond E. Mack, an attorney representing the South Fork Homeowner’s Association’s insurance carrier, Mercer Insurance Co., and representatives from the Philadelphia law firm Kline & Specter, which is representing Cerritelli’s family.
According to that firm’s website, “Kline & Specter is among the preeminent law firms in the United States concentrating in catastrophic injury litigation… The firm has achieved more verdicts and settlements of $10 million or more than any other law firm in Pennsylvania.”
Meanwhile, Steinmann has confirmed that none of the utility workers called 911 before the explosion occurred to alert authorities. Calls from nearby residents and businesses poured in after the accident took place, and Ewing firefighters, police and rescue workers responded to the scene immediately.
The mayor said he was first notified of the accident by Business Administrator Jim McManimon, who was home in his basement at the time of the explosion. The explosion blasted the back off McManimon’s home and likely would have killed him if he hadn’t been in his basement.
“The first phone call I got was from Jimmy,” Steinmann said. “He said, ‘My house just exploded.’ I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
McManimon had been watching television when the blast threw him out of his chair. He managed to make his way upstairs and out of the house, called 911, and then called the mayor.
Steinmann said he confirmed that McManimon was OK, then made sure that emergency services workers were headed out to the scene. He then went to the staging area that was set up at Mountain View office park on Bear Tavern Road directly across from the South Fork development.
“The first thing we did was gather information about what had happened,” said the mayor. “From that point forward we met in the State Police headquarters (located nearby) to get everybody’s phone numbers together and see what we needed to do. We then went to the site.”
The mayor, along with Lunetta and other officials, conducted three press conferences that day and then two the following day.
“The reason I did that was that I wanted to keep everybody informed so that there was no speculation,” Steinmann said. “There was no guessing that 10 people or 100 people died. We tried to quell all the rumors as fast as we possibly could.”
He said he believes that the township handled the situation as best as it possibly could under the circumstances.
“It was an emergency that a lot of people were first-timers at. Everybody responded well. Our police department, fire departments, as well as all of the outside agencies — the sheriff’s department, the prosecutor’s office — they worked as a cohesive group.”
In the hours and days that followed the accident, local and national print and television media descended on Ewing. Steinmann said he had some experience in dealing with the media on that level when the tornadoes hit town in the early 2000s, but he was on council then, and the scale was nowhere near the devastation of the gas explosion.
“I knew it was going to be a zoo,” Steinmann said. “I had it set in my head as to how I was going to approach dealing with them, and I had a kind of inner calm when I was talking to them. I had no apprehension at all in talking to the press.”
“I thought I would get overwhelmed, but that wasn’t the case,” he added. “But then again, I had a lot of good people who were giving me really good information. We anticipated some of the questions that the reporters were going to ask.”
He said there were some questions, though, that bothered him. “What irritated me were questions the press was asking about who I blame, or who was responsible,” said Steinmann. “I said, ‘I’m not here to blame. Right now all I want to is concentrate on all the victims. Make sure we can them back in their homes if possible, get them situated and make sure everybody is safe, and we’ll sort that other stuff out later.’”
One area where the township received criticism was the speed at which they released the 911 tapes.
“Somebody said that we weren’t releasing the 911 tapes because we were trying to hide something,” said Steinmann. “I said, ‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’
“Number one, I hadn’t listened to the tapes. Number two, some of the 911 calls got routed through Bucks County, so it took a little bit of time to get them all together. As soon as we got the 911 tapes back we released them to the press.”
Steinmann said that one major question is why 911 wasn’t called right away. He confirmed that no one called for emergency help until after the explosion occurred.
“Unfortunately they (Henkels & McCoy) didn’t call 911, they called PSEG. They came out, and my guess — and it’s speculation on my part — is that they figured they could fix the problem. Unfortunately, that was the wrong calculation.”
Steinmann said his major concern is that 911 wasn’t called as soon as the gas line was ruptured.
“We’ll be sitting with the proper agencies to make sure that the proper protocol is followed from here on out,” he said.
Steinmann added that regulations should be changed to require utility companies to notify local officials that they are working within a town.
“There’s no permitting required for utility companies,” he said. “They don’t even need to tell us they’re doing anything in town. I think that’s the thing we need to change, so that the town is at least aware. We need to know what contractors are doing in our town.
“We make everybody take out permits for private work, but the utilities are exempt. I’m not saying they need to come and pull out a permit, but they should at least notify our construction department, ‘Hey, we’re at such and such a place, or we’re on this road, and this is what we’re doing.’ Not come out and dig up a road and we wind up getting phone calls asking us what PSEG, or Trenton Water Works, or Verizon are doing, and we don’t know.”
Steinmann said he recently spoke with Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo, D-Hamilton, who told him he wants him to testify in front of a state committee “to see what we can do to try to curtail some of this stuff.”
The mayor outlined what he would like to see happen if a similar emergency were to occur in the future.
“Obviously, we want to go to the scene as quickly as possible, and then start evacuating individuals without putting anyone else in harms way,” he said.
“When you have a gas leak, anything can happen. So we need to be cautious in that respect,” Steinmann said. “We have to go in and tell people, ‘Don’t turn on any light switches, don’t turn on anything, just come on out. Whatever’s in there, just leave.’ I think that would be a good approach.
As for the status of the site, the township released the property back into the care of the homeowner’s association when it finished it’s investigation.
Out of the 55 homes that were damaged, the explosion left a total of 44 units inhabitable with varying degrees of damage. Six of those will need to be razed and replaced — either destroyed by the explosion, the fire, or the blast from the explosion.
The rest of them have damage but they can be salvaged, Steinmann said. “There’s maybe a roof truss or wall shifted.
“The timeframe (to fix them) really depends on the amount of damage,” he said. “Some could be six months others could be three or four weeks. For the ones that need to be rebuilt, it could be as long as a year and a half or two years.”
In an effort to help the victims, the township has set up a disaster relief fund that has collected cash and gift cards to help those affected by the disaster to get back on their feet.
The town, in conjunction with the American Red Cross, also conducted a resource center for the victims on March 15 at the Ewing Senior and Community Center on Lower Ferry Road.
Those at the center included representatives from the Motor Vehicle Commission, the Mercer County Clerk’s Office, social services, Verizon, and a representative from the tax assessor’s office to help provide information and also get documentation that they may have lost. There was also counseling, code enforcement officials and representatives from mortgage companies.
P&A Management of Hamilton Township, the South Fork Homeowner’s Association’s management company, is coordinating the cleanup and reconstruction of the site. They have chosen Cornerstone Appraisals and Restoration of West Windsor to rebuild the damaged and destroyed units.
According to Steinmann, the homeowner’s association’s insurance policy will pay for repairs and reconstruction of the units that were destroyed or had to be condemned. But the new units will only be built to contractor grade, including windows and doors.
“That means if someone had upgrades in their house, whether it’s appliances, a granite counter top, or hardwood floors, they’re not going to replace that,” said Steinmann.
“Some of the residents had their own individual insurance and that would pay to replace those upgrades and contents,” he said. “The people that didn’t have that, those are the ones who are really affected, and that’s where we come in (to provide assistance though the relief fund).”
For the residents whose homes weren’t damaged, or those who were able to return due to only minimal damage, there was a sense of unease in the community following the disaster.
“I went and knocked on some doors just to see how people were doing,” Steinmann said. “They were pretty shaken up. I went back a couple of times since and their nerves are a little bit better, but there’s some people who said, ‘I don’t know if I can stay here.’”
The mayor praised the way that the townships police, fire and rescue workers responded to the explosion.
“It all came together like we practiced it yesterday,” said Steinmann, suggesting that towns should hold drills to practice for these types of emergencies more often.
“We as a township, and other towns as well, should practice just to keep us sharp,” he said. “Nobody really anticipates a gas explosion, or any other kind of catastrophe is going to happen in their town. If you think about it, now we have a busy airport, and we’ve always had rail. With the rail, especially being freight, you don’t know what’s in those containers. You hear out in the Midwest that they have a derailment and they have a toxic chemical leak or things like that. It could happen here too, so we have to be very vigilant to make sure we’re well prepared.”
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