The Valley Is Burning

When disaster strikes, will you be prepared for the backlash? On September 13, 2018, a series of natural gas explosions on a Columbia Gas of Massachusetts (CMA) pipeline system devastated the Merrimack Valley, just north of Boston, Massachusetts. Twenty-one people were injured, and one person was killed. Thousands of residents in the towns of Andover and North Andover as well as the city of Lawrence were left without heat or hot water for months for months, causing CMA and its parent company, NiSource, to race against mother nature to replace nearly 45 miles of pipeline and thousands of appliances to affected residents, before the cold northeastern winter bore down on the area. Sarah Barczyk's The Valley is Burning: When Communications Becomes the Crisis examines the communications function during the event-what went right, what went wrong, and key takeaways from a communicator who worked side-by-side with project leadership to ensure the communities and public received the information they needed while enduring intense public and media scrutiny, heavy political pressure and backlash, multiple investigations, shifting timelines, economic uncertainty, a deep freeze, and the emotional holiday season.