Lucy Fitzgerald reports a tree came plummeting down on Hyde Park Avenue just past Walk Hill this evening. She reports she got to see it up close, because she walked home from Forest Hills, rather than jump on a bus that wouldn't be going anywhere. "Eight square blocks of hell today," she concludes.
Meanwhile, Centre Street in JP wasn't doing much better, even around 7 p.m., as Ben Rey shows us:
The remains of one of the vehicles. Photo by AlertNewEngland.
Update, 9:15 p.m.: The Arborway is clear and open again to traffic, State Police report.
Massachusetts State Police report four teenagers and two adults were seriously injured in a crash around 2 p.m. State Police say their initial investigation shows that an SUV carrying the teens "rolled over center line, struck a pickup with two adults in the opposite lane." AlertNewEngland reports two child car seats were found ejected from vehicles, but that no young children were in them at the time.
The Arborway was shut between Centre/the Jamaicaway and the Forest Hills rotary.
Boston Police advise:
Updated, 10 a.m.
Boston Police report arresting Christina Martinez, 21, of Dorchester, on charges she hit a woman in a South End intersection last night, then drove over her as she sped away - and that she wasn't wearing her glasses at the time.
Original conception of the Central Artery (Source).
You know, of course, about I-695 and I-95 in the city - cancelled after residents from Hyde Park to Somerville raised holy hell and the governor canceled the plans and we got the Orange Line instead.
But a 1930 report by the Boston Planning Board (yes, back in the days when Boston had a planning board) proposed a series of new expressways and parkways, pretty much all with the purpose of speeding people downtown - in part through cross-town routes that would take traffic off the major routes downtown.
Updated to reflect fact it wasn't a cab.
Around 4:30 a.m., Rachel Chernick reported being awoken by "a deafening crash sound" and the sight of a car in flames in Washington Square.
MrBrookline posts a photo and reports the driver, a young woman, was pulled out of the wreckage with bad burns.
Unluckily for him, Brian Clarke wound up right behind this tanker truck around 1 p.m. on Storrow Drive. Luckily for him, the driver stopped before proving that you can't drive a truck under a train bridge under a car bridge while a plane flies overhead.
Ed. note: Even though it doesn't seem like the tank is filled with anything flammable, can you imagine how long it would take to clean up the mess after the top of the thing was torn off?
In case you were wondering why Summer Street downtown was closed around lunchtime between Kingston and Lincoln, it's because the driver of this Ryder truck took out a light pole, as Robert Caplis shows us. Jen Smith captured the scene from another angle:
Jarrett Britt passed by a crashed Frito-Lays truck after a crash at the 93 split in Braintree around 10 a.m. Labor Day motorists beware. Or as State Police put it:
TT-Unit crash on Route 3 NB at the ramp for I-93 SB in Braintree. One lane open. Expect delays.
So those flash-flood warnings around 9:30 a.m. were for real. Sean Woods photographed a woman trapped by floodwaters on Spring Street by the Shaw's parking lot. Boston firefighters rushed to the scene to rescue her.
State Police shut 128 at Rte. 9 due to flooding. And cars were trapped by flood waters on Great Plain Avenue and Weston Road in Wellesley. Ed Grzyb reports:
Service along the B line got messed up around 6:45 p.m. when a car and a trolley collided at Comm. Ave. and Wallingford. Car lost, one person inside suffered some minor cuts. None of the roughly 25 people on the trolley at the time were injured.
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can fix this scene in time and place. See it larger.
Around noon today, what State Police described as an "overheight box truck" plowed into a low-hanging bridge near Charles Circle eastbound. Tim was there to capture the scene.
Brian D'Amico reports mechanical problems meant the HOV zipper lane on the Expressway was still set for northbound traffic this afternoon when it should have been set for the southbound rush out of the city.
To help alleviate the impending nightmare, MassDOT is opening the HOV lane to all traffic through 7 p.m.
Tremont Street around 10 a.m. Photo by Marc W.
Police shut the large intersection around 9:45 a.m. due to a suspicious package under a bus. A T spokesman says:
A concerned citizen on Charter complains:
residents in this area are now writing "boston police" on the orange cones they are using to save handicap spaces. has this been approved by the boston police?
The city responds:
Closed. Case Resolved. Cones picked up.
Scott Wholley captured a self-immolating car around 9:45 a.m. on that stretch of I-93 where nothing good seems to happen, in this case, southbound just before the Zakim.
Tinea reports the bicyclist seemed OK as she got in an ambulance after the collision not long after 1:30 a.m. at Harvard and Verndale streets.
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