While officials work out the details of a new fund to help victims of the Columbia Gas incident, the affected communities north of Boston are trying to regain a sense of normalcy amid a lack of natural gas service.
On a weeknight in South Lawrence, the dining room at the Sakura Buffet was unusually quiet.
Owner Iris Wei, whose first language is Chinese, said normally she serves a steady line of customers from lunch until about 9:30, but tonight is the fifth night her restaurant has been closed. She shut down early Thursday when a series of fires broke out in the city. She came back, days later, to a hamstrung business.
“It’s hard,” she said with a nod.
As a pair of would-be customers entered the restaurant and headed toward the empty seats, Wei politely informed them the restaurant has no gas, so cannot feed them.
"Maybe we’re going to open in a couple days," she said as they thank her and exit.
Wei said even though she hasn’t been able to take customers, there has been a lot of other work to do dealing with the inventory of food that spoiled during last week's electricity outages.
In the rear of the restaurant, there's a large walk-in refrigerator. She opened it, explaining why it's hollow inside. Everything, she says, had to be thrown out.
"We (had) to take it all trash, and we have to clean everything," she said in an interview with WGBH News.
Wei estimated she lost thousands of dollars in missed sales and tossed food. She is just one of many businesses in South Lawrence with "closed" signs posted on their doors.
They're waiting to reopen when gas service is restored.
Residents in the area like John Pham are waiting, too.
"When can we be back to our normal life again?" he asked in an interview.
Pham said he stayed with his parents when the neighborhood was forced to evacuate. He returned home Sunday morning when officials said it was safe.
With the electricity on, he and his wife can use the internet and watch TV, but without gas service, cooking and bathing are more difficult.
"If we don't have time to go to our parents' house in Salem, New Hampshire, we basically boil water on the grill, mix that with the cold water from the bathtub and then pour it on top of ourselves to shower real quickly," Pham explained. "For cooking, we're using a lot of the grill outside. We have a deck. For laundry, we're hanging (as a way of) drying our clothes after washing."
On top of that, he said his family incurred a lot of costs between the evacuation and the return home. He said he and his wife left home without clothing or food. When he came back, his window was damaged — a situation multiple residents discovered after safety crews swept the neighborhood to shut off the gas in homes.
"I heard we might be getting reimbursed back from Columbia Gas, though," Pham said.
The new Greater Lawrence Disaster Relief Fund has been set up to help gas incident victims like Pham and Wei.
Steve Bryant, president of Columbia Gas, told reporters this week the company is donating $10 million to the fund. That's in addition to distributing money to customers who are filing for reimbursement at one of three claim centers in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover.
"We're providing debit cards to those folks that have very immediate needs. Otherwise, we will be visiting with customers and visiting with businesses and homes that were impacted and we'll get funds into the hands of people who have immediate needs and get it to them very quickly," Bryant said.
Pham said he'll likely seek reimbursement for some of his costs and continue to find creative work-arounds until natural gas is flowing into his home again.
"I have no idea what we're going to do about the heating situation during the winter, but we're taking it one day at a time," he said with a smile.
The Greater Lawrence Disaster Relief Fund will be administered by the Essex County Community Foundation.
