In possible terror zone, fear, resignation, humor

Kari Stephens started yesterday morning as did many in Charlestown: calmly assessing her chances of surviving a liquefied natural gas tanker explosion.

A report released by the US Department of Energy says a terrorist attack on an LNG tanker would cause "major injuries and significant damage to structures" a third of a mile away and could cause second-degree burns on people more than a mile away.

Stephens, 25, lives on Allston Street, hundreds of yards away from where the tankers cruise along the Mystic River to the Distrigas terminal in Everett.

"My boyfriend was just telling me we're all going to be toast," Stephens said as she headed into Jenny's Pizza and Subs on Medford Street, clutching her dog, Bonamie. "It's horrible."

Grappling with the fact that an LNG explosion could incinerate them in an instant, residents of East Boston and Charlestown are battling back with characteristic grit.

They joke about the dangers. They measure the distance from their homes to the possible blast zones. And they say there's little the city could do to protect them from a catastrophe. That's just the new reality in the neighborhood, as sure as the tankers loom on the horizon.

"They could have 100,000 security guys. They're going to be over here," said Barbara Bartoloni of East Boston, motioning to the left, "and they're going to strike over there," motioning the other way. "Come on. What are we going to do?"

Bartoloni, who was in the parking lot at Shaw's on Border Street, pushed groceries into the back seat of her car, seemingly resigned. "It's going to happen," she said.

The study said that if an LNG ship were attacked it would create a puncture of between 6 and 39 feet. A 16-foot puncture, the study said, would produce a thermal blast that would set buildings on fire, melt steel out to 1,281 feet, and give people second-degree burns up to 4,282 feet away.

A 39-foot rupture would burn buildings out to 1,975 feet and burn people up to 6,299 feet away, well over a mile. The worst-case scenario measured by the report was three 16-foot holes. That would set structures aflame out to 2,067 feet and burn people as far as 6,949 feet away.

At a press conference yesterday, Fire Commissioner Paul A. Christian said the city has long been aware of the dangers facing residents close to the tankers.

"There is a very low probability that the ship would be compromised, but there's still a possibility," Christian said. "The potential is out there."

As has Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Christian argued that the LNG tankers should unload offshore or away from people. "I know an offshore facility would certainly be expensive, but I think it's going to become obvious after this report that that is the only real, viable option over the long-term," he said.

That might suit Chet Ferreira, who looks out on the current LNG facility from a giant picture window at Jenny's Pizza, where he works.

"If it goes, we all go, right, Joey?" said Ferreira to his boss, Joey Lecey, 33.

"We're in the front row," Lecey said. "What does scare us is when [the tanker] is in, and then all of a sudden you see the planes taking off from Logan and they kind of go up over this way here. After 9/11, you put two and two together."

Lecey tried to lighten the mood in the busy little pizza shop. Picking up on Stephens's assessment that she's "toast," he chimed back, "There's light rye. There's dark wheat. I think we're pumpernickel here."

Back at Shaw's in East Boston, Debby Hathaway, 44, a cold wind blowing in off the harbor, imagined a hideous vision of an LNG inferno.

"If they were ever to hit one of them, East Boston would be gone," Hathaway said. "Definitely. It'd be nothing but a ball of flame."

A lifelong resident accustomed to the roar of jets, Hathaway said she had long worried about a terrorist striking one of the planes over her home with a rocket launcher fired from the street below.

"Everything's so wide open," Hathaway said. "They could stand right there on Coleridge Street and hit a plane with no problem. And then be gone. There's no security. And now you've got your tankers, and so it's double trouble."

Grimly, Stephens said she hopes the terrorists might spare Charlestown, a neighborhood of 1.4 square miles and 15,000 people, and instead attack downtown Boston.

"If they did it, and this sounds awful, not hopefully, but possibly, it would be more toward the city," Stephens said. "It's awful, I know, but if we're getting down to a third-of-a-mile kind of talk?"

Menino said he would ask his lawyers to investigate whether the 166-page report might bolster a city lawsuit to move the LNG facility offshore. Menino has sued before to stop the tankers and lost.

"I'm asking my law department to see if we can go back to the court to maybe get some action," he said.

"The cynics say, 'Mayor, we haven't had a problem yet,' " Menino said. "Well, they hadn't had a 9/11 yet, either. It's a different world we live in today."

Julie Vitek -- spokeswoman for Distrigas, which owns and operates the LNG facility -- said the company has a 33-year record of safety in Boston.

"From our perspective, the report affirms the fact that LNG shipping has been and continues to be managed safely and securely, including in urban areas," Vitek said. "It also affirms our belief that the possibility of release of LNG from these robust vessels is widely regarded as very low."

At Robert's Barber Shop on Sumner Street in East Boston, Mike Buono, 72, railed against the mayor, the energy companies, and federal authorities for not doing enough to protect residents.

"I'm not a defeatist, but I do think that something's going to happen," said Buono, a lifelong resident of the neighborhood. "I honestly feel that we're under the gun."