A poor financial situation that has worsened with the recent global recession and has led to multiple municipal layoffs had Lawrence contemplating receivership. On February 9, 2019, in recognition of the role the town has played in the labor movement, Senator Elizabeth Warren officially announced her candidacy for President of the United States in Lawrence. On September 13, 2018, a series of gas explosions and fires broke out in as many as 40 homes in Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover. The disaster killed one resident and caused over 30,000 customers to evacuate their homes. A year after this first incident on September 27, 2019 there was another gas leak causing people to evacuate their homes again. Lawrence has been aptly nicknamed the "Immigrant City". It has been home to numerous different immigrant communities, most of whom arrived during the great wave of European immigration to America that ended in the 1920s. Lawrence became home to large groups of immigrants from Europe, beginning with the Irish in 1845, Germans after the social upheaval in Germany in 1848, Swedes fleeing an overcrowded Sweden, and French Canadians seeking to escape hard northern farm life from the 1850s onward. A second wave began arriving after 1900, as part of the great mass of Italian and Eastern European immigrants, including Jews from Russia, Poland, Lithuania and neighboring regions. Immigration to the United States was severely curtailed in the 1920s with the Immigration Act of 1924, when foreign-born immigration to Lawrence virtually ceased for over 40 years. In 1890, the foreign-born population of 28,577 was divided as follows, with the significant remainder of the population being children of foreign born residents: 7,058 Irish; 6,999 French Canadians; 5,131 English; 2,465 German; 1,683 English Canadian. In 1920, toward the end of the first wave of immigration, most ethnic groups had numerous social clubs in the city. The Portuguese had 2; the English had 2; the Jews had 3; the Armenians, 5; the Lebanese and Syrians, 6; the Irish, 8; the Polish, 9; the French Canadians and Belgian-French, 14; the Lithuanians, 18; the Italians, 32; and the Germans, 47. However, the center of social life, even more than clubs or fraternal organizations, was churches. Lawrence is dotted with churches, many now closed, torn down or converted into other uses. These churches signify, more than any other artifacts, the immigrant communities that once lived within walking distance of each church. Irish immigrants arrived in Lawrence at its birth, which coincided with the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s, the event that drove great numbers of Irish out of Ireland.