To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the gas explosion at the Durham Woods community, Edison’s television station has produced a documentary about the incident with footage and interviews from those involved.
In March 1994, Ed Cologna of Edison TV was creating training videos for the Edison police and fire departments around the time of the explosion. Since he had a fire suit, he received exclusive access to take footage of what was happening.
Michael D’Amato, who now works for Edison TV, was living with his wife Bev in the approximately 1,000-unit Durham Woods complex.
“Durham Woods was our first apartment together,” D’Amato said, adding that the couple moved there in 1992. They chose Durham Woods because it was one of the nicest communities they saw when looking for a place to live, Bev D’Amato said.
Their apartment building survived the gas-pipeline explosion on March 23, 1994, but an adjacent one burned down.
Above: The explosion of a natural gas pipeline reduced sections of Edison’s Durham Woods apartment complex to rubble in March 1994. Left: Firefighters battle the late-night blaze. FILE PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE EDISON MAYORS OFFICE The explosion and ensuing fire destroyed eight buildings, displaced 1,500 residents and caused $25 million property damage, while pushing the township’s first aid squads and police and fire departments to their limits.
In what several local officials described as a miracle, there were no fatalities from the explosion itself. However, a nearby resident suffered a fatal heart attack during the event.
The documentary features former Mayor George Spadoro, who was just three months into his first term. He recalled that the winter of 1994 saw twice the amount of snowfall of this past winter, and sustained cold weather.
“The first few months of being sworn in was quite a challenge, and it was leading up to the biggest challenge of my 12 years as mayor — dealing with a crisis and a disaster, which was this explosion,” Spadoro said in the documentary.
The documentary also features former Fire Chief Albert Lamkie, former Parks and Recreation Director Angelo Orlando, current Police Chief Thomas Bryan, who was a detective at the time, and former Health and Human Services Director John Grun.
Grun said he was sitting in his office at Town Hall and was cleaning up after a council meeting that ended around 11:30 p.m. when he saw the parking lot light up. “I looked out the window. … I thought it was really odd, and I saw the fire,” he recalled.
Edison Town Hall is roughly two-and-a-half miles from Durham Woods.
Spadoro said it looked like daylight in the middle of the night.
Michael and Bev D’Amato had just gone to bed when they were awoken by a “tremendous noise,” which prompted them to get on the floor.
“All we could see was this orange glow that was just throbbing,” Michael D’Amato said.
Lamkie said it sounded like jet engines running in the area where the gas line had ruptured.
“I had to yell all night,” he recalled.
Grun said that when he walked out to the parking lot of Town Hall, he could feel the heat from the fire.
“That is quite a distance [away],” he said.
Bryan said he could feel the heat coming out of the ground.
“It was almost like it melted the soles of my shoes. It was incredible,” he said.
D’Amato said that when he looked out the window of their apartment, he saw people running and cars racing across lawns in the eerie orange glow. “It looked like something out of a Japanese monster movie,” he said.
Edison TV’s documentary includes news footage of the explosion.
“While we were cooling our heels at my sister’s house in North Edison, I had taped the footage,” D’Amato said.
He noted that it was bizarre to see their town on the national news.
“We thought it was a nuclear attack on New York City,” he said, adding that the World Trade Center bombing had occurred the year before.
Michael and Bev D’Amato left their apartment after the explosion with the expectation that they could get to their cars, but they were met with a wall of heat. They decided to run the other way and eventually made it to the Duchess Diner in Metuchen around 2 a.m.
“We didn’t have cellphones, so we figured we could use the pay phone to call my sister,” he said.
Spadoro said initially no one knew what was happening. Cologna said the events unfolded so quickly that it was “almost impossible” to grasp everything that was going on. Due to the location of the complex, it was determined at some point during the first couple of hours that a gas pipeline had exploded, officials said.
“The burst of the gas kicked all of the earth around it, and thousands of stones as sharp as a knife came down and hit the pipe, causing a spark. And that is what actually caused the explosion,” Orlando said.
Spadoro said there was no switch with which the gas could be shut off. Eighty feet of pipeline had been blown out of the ground.
“We found out that the only way to turn off the gas was to find the gigantic valve,” he said, noting that it had to be manually turned.
Lamkie said the valve was turned 751 times, or a quarter of the way. Gas company officials had to locate another valve in Piscataway and turn that in order for the gas to be completely shut off. This took two-and-a-half hours, he said.
Afterward, Grun’s department helped those residents who lost everything transition back to normal life. He said some suffered post-traumatic stress disorder.
“This was an explosion where people were thrown out of bed. [It] scared the daylights out of people, and they needed a lot of support,” he said.
A 40-foot dirt berm that had been constructed at Durham Woods as a sound barrier to block noise from an asphalt plant absorbed some of the blast and saved hundreds of lives, according to Orlando.
The emergency response, which Spadoro referred to as “the kitchen cabinet,” set precedents for years to come. In 2001, he and local emergency personnel traveled to New York City to volunteer after the Sept. 11 attacks. He said Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his emergency management coordinator congratulated him and his emergency team for their work during the explosion. Spadoro learned that Edison’s response to the explosion was one of the scenarios New York emergency personnel studied in preparing for their own emergency responses.
“I thought that was a heck of a compliment,” said Spadoro.
Lamkie said buildings were saved by being hosed down even though the fire had not yet reached them.
The Texas Eastern Corp. owns the pipeline that runs from Texas at the Mexican border to New England. The pipeline was installed in 1961.
The rupture was the result of damage caused by backhoes on two occasions between 1986 and 1994, officials said.
Several legislative acts followed the incident in Edison. One mandates that anyone planning to dig call a number so that a locator can be sent to mark the approximate location of underground lines, pipes and cables.
“I think the lessons learned at Durham Woods were taken seriously,” Grun said in the documentary. “We got more equipment, better radios … when cellphones came out, we got cellphones.”
Grun said communication is key, but it was very difficult at the time of the incident. He said he had to stay in his office at Town Hall to communicate with his people.
The D’Amatos lived in the Durham Woods complex two more years after the explosion and have since moved out of the area.
The documentary, “The Durham Woods Explosion: 20 Years Later,” can be seen on Edison TV or accessed on YouTube. For more information visit www.edisonnj.org.