It's hard enough to run a small business but these folks are now being asked to take on two jobs, run a small business and run a claims prosecution against an insurance company that doesn't want to pay.

So they haven't told you yet then if they're going to--they've not committed to reimburse you for the time that your business was less than it otherwise would have been if this disaster hadn't occurred?

So how deep were you into this before you realized--I mean, I can do the math here, that 90 percent of these homes you're not going to be able to fix this problem with space heaters.

Have you urged National Grid to reach an agreement with its workers so that you could call on mutual aid and get those people to work here in Lawrence and Andover and North Andover?

Why not?

Mr. Chairman, does that mean people can still submit stories?

I mean, you could see much more information on the news than you could get from the company that was responsible both for the explosion and for the safety of every single resident in the region.

So what you're saying is one of the ways small businesses lost out obviously is if they were closed all together, but the second way is small businesses lost out because there were just a lot fewer people who came in to shop, even if your…

So there was always this dueling thing of what check is going to hit for them first and then will Columbia Gas pay the subsequent issue after.

What I'm hearing you say is there's no commitment on the part of Columbia Gas.

The NTSB reports reveal unambiguous failures by the company that you run that contributed to this tragedy.