What saved victims might haunt them

Ruth "Babe" Ouimette has developed a "bad case of nerves" since last week's powerful, pre dawn explosion in her Danversport neighborhood. Normally a sound sleeper, Ouimette, 88, has been waking up in the middle of the night.

Ouimette understands loss and tragedies -- she lost her husband in World War II after just 32 days of marriage. Now it seems that her world has been shaken to its core again.

Her home on Riverside Street, where she has lived for 84 years, is in shambles from the fiery blast last Wednesday, with nearly every window blown out, beloved figurines shattered, and family photographs torn into pieces. Roughly 70 houses and businesses in her neighborhood were damaged by the explosion at the CAI Inc. chemical plant. Ouimette is staying with a niece in Middleton until her house is declared habitable. She has been given no timetable.

While officials say most of the 200 residents displaced in the blast will be made whole financially by insurance, mending traumatized psyches may be more challenging.

The very factor that saved so many from physical harm may have exacerbated emotional fallout, mental health specialists say. Only 10 people were hospitalized, with minor injuries, in part because most nearby residents were asleep in bed and covered with blankets as broken window glass sailed over them.

"It's physically better to be under the covers in terms of not being hit, but emotionally, being woken out of sleep with your house falling down around you, the impact is much more powerful," said Dr. Henry Schniewind, a Cambridge-based psychiatrist who was a member of the Red Cross mental health team that responded to the Danversport explosion and evaluated residents in the hours afterward.

The emotional impact "is harder than if it happened in the middle of the day when you are awake and more oriented," Schniewind said.

It's important, mental health specialists said, for residents to know that they might experience a variety of emotional problems -- trouble concentrating, loss of appetite, fuzzy memories, nightmares -- that may seem abnormal but are quite common after a traumatic incident.

"Most everyone who goes through a life-threatening event of this magnitude does have trouble sleeping," said psychologist Terence Keane, head of the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at the federal Department of Veterans Affairs Boston Health Care System. "They may have emotional reactions, such as short tempers or a short fuse."

Keane, who specializes in war trauma, has also cared for patients following a variety of disasters, including the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. He said it is common for people who have gone through a significant trauma to have lingering anxieties and sleep problems for weeks. Such symptoms for most people, he said, should dramatically decrease within one to three months without treatment. And most residents, he said, probably will not develop long-term problems.

But Keane said a community's response in the weeks following traumatic events is key to the healing process.

"The maintenance of a sense of community among people whose homes were destroyed will be directly related to their trajectory of recovery," Keane said. "Keeping people near Danvers is important. As close by as they can get housing so they remain in the context of the supportive environment, near people who went through something similar to themselves."

That's the model being used in the Danvers public schools, especially the three closest to the Danversport neighborhood, said Superintendent Lisa Dana.

"It's important for teachers and students to come together and acknowledge what happened and then try to continue the routine of the day," Dana said. "We have social workers and the principals have been reaching out to families and students, letting them know we are available to speak to them if they need resources."

At the Riverside Elementary School, children are being encouraged to talk about their feelings during regular "open-circle" sessions, where they pull their chairs into a circle and usually talk about things like bullying, Dana said. Red Cross mental health specialists also gave teachers and administrators literature to explain trauma symptoms and the healing process for different age groups.

For instance, children who recently were toilet trained may regress for a few weeks, Schniewind said, "or they will become more clingy. They need to know their parents are around. Older children and even some younger adolescents will become more dependent on their family and routines than they were before."

Plenty of adults also have lingering anxieties, based on what is being heard by Pamela Parkinson, the town's director of senior and social services.

"I had a young single mother of two small children on Friday, and she said she was so distraught she couldn't sleep," Parkinson said. "I am exhausted," the woman told her, "but I am afraid to go to sleep." The woman also told her that she didn't feel safe returning to her home -- even if it were declared safe, Parkinson said.

This week, one of Parkinson's neighbors told her that his father-in-law, displaced by the explosion, has become so jumpy that he startles when a door is shut.

"I think the effects of this," Parkinson said, "are going to be far and long-lasting."

Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com.