Hey, there! Log in / Register
Everett goes boom
By adamg on Wed, 12/05/2007 - 9:32am
200 people evacuated from homes; dozens of cars catch fire as gas tanker tips over at Sweetser Circle (routes 16 and 99) early this morning:
Carl Stevens on the scene around 2:00 a.m.
More coverage:
Globe
Channel 4
Channel 5
Herald.
The Everett Mirror thanks the Everett Fire Department:
... This fire could have been so much worse than it was, particularly given the density of housing and parking in the area. It's amazing that no one was killed or seriously injured. Hats off to all of Everett's responders.
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Get the tankers out of residential areas!
If this happened in other areas of Rt 99, it would have been a neighborhood wide conflagration.
In Medford, the tankers can't take the vastly more appropriate Rt 16, because the DCR won't improve the route and designates it "pleasure vehicles", so they speed along the extremely narrow colonial-era Rt. 60 menacing anyone going "only" 10mph over the speed limit with their front bumpers - or they creep and crawl and bash mirrors with busses and nearly mow down peds in the crosswalks (then honk and mouth off ... then find themselves surrounded by 20 people from age 15 to 70 explaining the crosswalk and 20mph concepts).
The state needs to do proper hazmat routing - these generally are NOT delivery tankers either - they are long-hauls headed to and from the Revere and Everett tanks. Terrorists schmerrorists, it is these ordinary and preedictable disasters that need some attention, damn it! This is horrific, and I'm glad nobody was seriously hurt, but I know some slippery sharp turns and a rotary perched on a hill near my house that could topple a speeding truck - and result in Danvers-level mayhem as densely-packed downhill neighborhoods explode.