News Articles

A Moving Experience
by Eunnie Park, Staff Writer

The Record, December 23, 2005 - BERGENFIELD - The past 10 nights have been a blur of restless agony for Phil Dursik and his wife. No sleep. Nightmares. Staring into space, reliving last week's Elm Street gas explosion. "My wife is tossing and turning, I wake her up, and she gets up crying," said Dursik, a 51-year-old medical financial adviser who lost his home of 10 years in the disaster. But little by little, the Dursiks are rebuilding their lives.

There's the Target gift certificate given by United Way, which was spent on towels, bed sheets and a microwave. There are the donations from a Ramsey woman - tables, chairs, even a hutch. And a place to put it all: a warm one-bedroom apartment with hardwood floors in New Milford. It still feels strange, doesn't quite feel like home. But it's somewhere to stay, and that might help his wife feel better, Dursik said. "I want to see her happy and smiling again, which neither of us have been doing much lately," Dursik said Thursday while moving the donated furniture into his new home.

The Dursiks are among the two dozen families who lost their homes in the Dec. 13 explosion, which killed three people and injured five. The blast occurred after a work crew removing an oil tank disturbed a gas line that fed the apartment building. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the explosion. Preliminary results might be available next week, said spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz.

Dursik and his wife are among the first to find a new home. Soon after the explosion, he sought out a Realtor and has been receptive to help from friends, acquaintances and organizations like United Way. "It's unbelievable," he said of the generosity. "I told my wife about [the furniture] and she went to tears." United Way has been helping the victims by providing clothes, furniture, $400 Target gift certificates and security deposits on new homes. Care managers are meeting with victims to determine their needs. And trauma clinicians are available to help them recover emotionally, said Tom Toronto, president of Bergen County United Way. Toronto spent Thursday helping Dursik move furniture into the new apartment.

But many victims of the explosion have not been as proactive, or responsive, as Dursik in the effort to rebuild their lives, said Cheryl Moses, a director of grant services for United Way. "Many of them are not ready to move [on]," she said. "They're still in the 'I don't believe' stage," Dursik said. Dursik is eager to move on. He and his wife will spend the holidays with her daughter's family in Bergenfield, where they stayed the past week. Dursik's goal was to have a new place by Christmas. But getting through the holidays won't be easy. "I just foresee crying and holding my wife and saying, 'OK, now we can move on with our life,' " he said. "It's going to take awhile. It's going to take a long time."