The East Boston gas surge was a series of fires and at least one explosion that took place early on the morning of September 23, 1983, when an underground control that regulated the flow of natural gas failed, causing a surge of the fuel into the community of East Boston, Massachusetts.
The sudden swell of gas rushed into businesses and homes in the neighborhood, increasing the size of pilot lights to as much as a foot high. A number of fires started as a result and the second floor of one building in the Central Square area, which housed a lounge, exploded.
Between 3:15 and 8:00 a.m., 911 operators received approximately 170 calls reporting fires and the smell of gas. People rushed into the streets, and McClellan Highway and the Callahan Tunnel were closed to incoming traffic, essentially shutting down the neighborhood, except for emergency vehicles, whose sirens blared in all directions.
By mid-morning, the fires were out and the gas problem was fixed. The Boston Gas Company later said that a broken water main had flooded a gas regulator, causing the surge. Surprisingly, there were no reports of injuries or deaths.
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“The East is the hearthside of America. Like any home, therefore, it has the defects of its virtues. Because it is a long-lived-in house, it bursts its seams, is inconvenient, needs constant refurbishing. And some of the family resources have been spent. To attain the privacy that grown-up people find so desirable, Easterners live a harder life than people elsewhere. Today it is we and not the frontiersman who must be rugged to survive.”
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978)
“If nobody knows you that does not argue that you be unknown, nobody knew Ida when they no longer lived in Boston but that did not mean that she was unknown.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Shielded, what sorts of life are stirring yet:
Legs lagged like drains, slippers soft as fungus,
The gas and grate, the old cold sour grey bed.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
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—Gus Van Sant, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Dan Yost. Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)