It was a year ago this week a chemical-plant explosion rocked the region and devastated a Danvers neighborhood.
The headline in the next day's newspaper quoted a stunned victim: "We're all alive."
Slowly residents are returning to the streets in the Danversport neighborhood. But they will always carry with them the memory of that early morning of Nov. 22 - the day before Thanksgiving in 2006 - when a window-shattering blast roused them from their sleep, the flames leapt high in the sky, and their formerly quiet streets were turned into an evacuation zone.
The pictures taken at first light showed a scene of unbelievable devastation. That no one was killed, or even seriously injured, was, as then-Gov. Mitt Romney declared, nothing less than "a Thanksgiving miracle."
It's an experience not to be wished on anyone. But a year after the fact, most agree there were some valuable lessons to be learned from what happened that morning.
* First of all, it's not a good idea to have an enterprise that works with highly volatile substances located in the midst of a residential area.
Last week's report of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board concluded that it was a buildup of flammable vapors inside the building on Water Street, sparked by something still unknown, that caused the explosion. Fortunately CAI Inc. and Arnel Co., manufacturers of ink and paint respectively, are unlikely to return to the site.
Still, regardless of where such manufacturing activities take place, companies have an obligation to make sure equipment is maintained properly and safety procedures are followed to the letter. This wasn't the case here.
* State and local authorities must give more than lip service to the regulation of these industries. There are laws governing the use and storage of hazardous substances, but they are of little use if not properly enforced.
Fortunately efforts are under way now to beef up the monitoring of these activities to make sure another neighborhood doesn't suffer the same fate that befell that section of Danversport a year ago.
