The community of New Ferry is 'stronger than ever' five years after an explosion that injured 81 people.
The explosion which shook the neighbourhood, literally and symbolically, was caused by Pascal Blasio, the owner of a furniture shop on the corner where Bebington Road meets Boundary Road. Blasio’s intention was to ‘swindle insurers out of £50,000', as worded by the presiding judge who would sentence him to 20 years in prison.
Police said 63 properties in the surrounding area were damaged but the after effects were far broader. A Wirral councillor at the time called it “probably the most significant disaster that the council and emergency services in the borough had ever faced in peacetime".
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Five years later and physically little changed, apart from the demolition of buildings neighbouring the epicentre of the blast, including a community centre. People have moved out, people have moved in, but one thing that hasn’t shifted is the community left behind by the explosion.
Christopher Lee-Power, from Birkenhead, was watching Ant and Dec in his home no more than 100 metres from the epicentre of the blast when it happened. He remembers the smashed windows, the destroyed brick and the dust which was spread like a thick apocalyptic fog, but the terror he felt for his wife and son who were out at the time is what stuck with him most.
He told the ECHO: “My wife had decided to go to her sisters and my son was at school. I was alone in my cottage, probably five doors away from the explosion site.
“My wife was telling me she was terrified; my son was telling me he was terrified. They didn’t know whether I was alive or dead, they couldn’t get through to me on the phone.
“When they saw me we hugged. That was a moment of release for me because I actually got to see my family after hours and hours and hours of just panicking- really for them.
“I knew I was alright, but my fear was that they didn’t know if I was alive or dead, so they’re panicking, worried sick if I’m alive or not. That was the beginning of a three year battle to put things right for us as a family, and for us as a community.”
His family was displaced for three years, but after struggling with insurance companies, energy providers who still sent bill to their destroyed home, no form of relief from the government apart from the £550 given to each of the victims by the local council, and strict rebuilding rules due to the Grade-II listing of his home, they finally moved back in. It’s one story of many similar told by the people who lived nearby.
“When I first moved around here I hardly knew anyone. Yes I’d give them a nod and a smile in the shop, but on an intimate level, even just being able to have long conversations, I didn’t do that.
“It took an explosion to bring us together. After the explosion New Ferry and Port Sunlight came together, we worked together, we fought together and together we went on that journey as a community, and we want to keep that support and continue being a community.
“I live on Bebington Road but as you go round the corner it’s called Boundary Road- there shouldn’t be a boundary anymore because New Ferry and Port Sunlight village are one, we’re a community now.”
“There is no boundary anymore, we have got so close over those years- we went to the courts together, we went to the council meetings together, we protested, we went on the marches together. We want to keep that, so whatever is built, whatever is regenerated has to complement our communities.”
The beginning of the regeneration of the area largely destroyed by the blast has been five years in the making, and many, including Christopher and his neighbours, think that is five years too long. In fact, it took until this year to bring down the last of the buildings made uninhabitable and unrepairable by the blast.
In February, the council announced that they had found an adequate developer to work on the site. Some of the delay has been due to the fact that some of the destroyed buildings are still not owned by the council, so coming up with plans to regenerate the area are perhaps not as simple as might first be expected.
Christopher and his community are understanding of all the red tape that must be fought through to restore fill that physical void in their community, particularly with the cuts to Wirral council’s funding over the last decade. But that understanding does have its limits.
“I think that many people have their own ideas of how to move forward. Some people have made the choice not to remember the past, they don’t want to talk about it, they don’t want that memory and they want to move forward.
“But for me I always want to mark it because I look back in order to look forward. In a way we’re all survivors- yes, on the night we were victims, but now we’re survivors because we’ve gone through so much.
“I look online and I get the odd news about regeneration, and that’s good. But what angers me, putting aside what the council has said- that they’re looking for money or they’re looking for contractors- what angers me is the question, why five years on?
“Why the delay in moving the rubble from that empty site? Why empty shops?
“Five years is a long time, and people have moved on, but there is always that question at the back of my mind, and I have a right to ask why five years on?”
Councillor Tony Jones, Chair of the Economy, Regeneration and Development Committee at Wirral Council said: "The regeneration of New Ferry is – and has been since the gas explosion in March 2017 – a top priority for the council. However, it has been and remains a complex and long-term process due to the majority of the land and buildings earmarked within the Masterplan being in private ownership.
“It has taken investment and a lot of hard work to get us to the point where a large proportion of these sites are now owned by the council and we have been able to appoint the Regenda Group as our preferred developer with a great deal of confidence that, together, we will deliver the New Ferry Masterplan within the next couple of years.
“The group consists of multi-disciplined, specialist companies and will bring a strong community focus to the project. It is committed to providing social value in this partnership as well as high-quality new buildings to New Ferry.”
