Published in the March 15, 2018 edition

By MAUREEN DOHERTY

NORTH READING — North Readingites hunkered down overnight Monday into Tuesday as the third nor’easter in just 10 days rolled across the region and into town.

Life had just begun to return to normal this past Sunday night for those final few electrical customers who had lost power to their homes at some point during March 7-8 nor’easter when they were told to brace themselves for the next storm. Originally slated to strike by midnight, DPW crews in this part of the state had a few more hours to pretreat the roads than originally forecasted. 

Due to its potential to wallop the area with 1 to 3 inches of snow per hour during the morning rush hour coupled with high winds leading to snow drifts and blizzard-like conditions, local schoolchildren earned yet another snow day from school Tuesday. It continued snow throughout the day Tuesday, leaving 23 inches of snow in its wake, leading to a decision to call off school on Wednesday as well.

Additionally, all of the town’s non-emergency services, including Town Hall, the Edith O’Leary Senior Center and Flint Memorial Library, were closed.

It is said March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, and so far it is living up to its promise, and more snow is forecasted for early next week. Although these storms came in quick succession, the conditions they brought were all unique.

The March 2 storm brought torrential rain, the March 7-8 storm started with plentiful rainfall and then changed over to snowflakes so thick and heavy that one Boston meteorologist dubbed the “snow waffles.” The layers of slush under the snow made it feel like you were shoveling wet cement. Its heaviness led to hundreds of calls for downed trees and wires throughout town and the region. What didn’t break was often stretched to the breaking point by the weight of the snow.

RMLD restores power to 2,200

At the height of the March 7-8 storm, more than 2,200 RMLD customers were without power throughout its four-town region of North Reading, Lynnfield, Reading and Middleton.

“There were 70 area outages throughout RMLD’s service area over the course of the storm. North Reading had 13 area outages which affected approximately 300 customers,” according to Joyce Mulvaney, communications director for RMLD. “Lynnfield Center had 10 area outages, also affecting approximately 300 customers,” she said, adding “there were also multiple individual services affected across the four towns.”

“In addition to RMLD crews, we had six mutual aid crews and four contractor crews assist with repair and restoration efforts,” Mulvaney told the Transcript.

From start to finish, RMLD’s storm response was lengthy, officially running from Wednesday at 11 p.m. through Sunday at 8 p.m. “Crews continued to address some residual issues related to the storm (Monday). All area outages were resolved by Saturday morning. From there, crews shifted their response to individual services and other necessary repairs,” explained Mulvaney.

In total, there were approximately 1,500 service issues logged as a result of this storm, which were defined as area outages, individual service outages/repairs, downed poles, downed wires, and trees/limbs on wires, she stated.

Town’s storm response 

Town Administrator Michael Gilleberto told the Transcript that a few hours after the rain turned to snow around 9 p.m. March 7 the calls for downed trees or downed trees involving wires began around 11:30 p.m. “That ran through the overnight and at 5 a.m. on Thursday they had received about 70 calls for downed debris, so it was a very busy evening for our public works crews who were not only required to plow during the storm, but also had to push debris off to the side of the road and maneuver around debris,” he said.

Gilleberto added that all of the town’s police and fire personnel also had to maneuver around this debris as they “responded to nearly every one of those calls in some fashion to evaluate the situation, cordoned off spots where necessary, and redirect traffic around these hazards. That part of the exercise continued into the middle part of the day on Thursday when we were able to transition (crews) to repair and restoration of power for people.”

The Housing Authority at Peabody Court lost power around 5 a.m. Thursday, Gilleberto said. Peabody Court consists of 40 apartment units for the town’s senior citizens so restoring it took precedence. He estimated it was restored by mid-Thursday afternoon.

“This was obviously a concern for us because you have dozens of elderly residents, some of whom require more needs. We were fortunate we were able to prioritize that location,” Gilleberto said.

“We had a warming center open until 7 p.m. Thursday evening and we had warming services available at the Senior Center from 8 a.m. Friday until 1 p.m. Those same services were available until 5 p.m. at the library. We call it a warming and charging center. People can come in and get warm, charge their devices. We had two people come to the warming center on Thursday afternoon,” he said.

While the library staff did not keep official numbers, he said staff had noted an increased use of the library on both Thursday and Friday “that is attributed to people who were visiting the library because they were without power,” he said.

Going above and beyond

Gilleberto praised the efforts of several town employees for going above and beyond the scope of their duties in response to this storm.

“There was a lot of work that went into this one because of the snow and downed limbs happening at the same time,” he said.

Director of Elder Services Mary Prenney staffed the Senior Center until 7 p.m. Thursday, he said. “She prepared some meals to be brought down to people at the Housing Authority (Peabody Court) during the day Thursday before the power was back on for a couple of people who were the most vulnerable and unable to get out of their apartments. Mary does a fantastic job connecting with the most vulnerable people that she is aware of,” he added.

He also cited Dan Tremblay, the assistant library director, “who was able to make accommodations for a few dozen people who needed warming services in the library. They saw a general uptick but no one came in and said, ‘I’m looking for the warming center.’”

Emerging leaders

Gilleberto also noted that two public safety personnel members were involved in new leadership roles during the March 7-8 storm who did an excellent job.

“This was their first experience with additional responsibility,” he said of Fire Chief Stats and DPW Operations Manager Chris Deming.

Deming, Gilleberto said, was instrumental in organizing the storm clean-up operations. In addition to Deming’s new responsibilities, with the current vacancy in the DPW Director position the storm clean-up required a cooperative effort with Water Superintendent Mark Clark who is also serving as acting DPW Director while both continue to perform their regular duties.

Deming “did a fantastic job of marshaling the resources of his department and making a decision to bring in a contractor to clean up some of the most hard-hit neighborhoods. On the MacIntyre Drive stretch, I thought there were no trees left to come down after the October storm, but there was a ton of stuff in the road,” Gilleberto observed.

When crews were plowing this area of town the term Gilleberto kept hearing was ‘goat path’ to describe how crews had to dart to the left and right around the tree debris on the winding subdivision road which has a wide paved layout.

“It was (Deming’s) recommendation to bring in a contractor to assist our crews who were also conducting clean up operations on Friday and Saturday. Bringing in the ability to have a second or third crew, through a contractor (to clean up), allowed us to get it done,” Gilleberto said.

In advance of the storm that was forecast to hit March 12 and 13 Deming “identified it as a concern based on the uncertainty of that forecast” that additional crews would be needed this week as well. “Last Thursday afternoon Chris said we need to get the debris off the road before we’re back out plowing it again next week,” Gilleberto said.

One example cited by the T.A. was Angel Road off Elm Street, which “was plowed the full width but there was a ton of debris in the middle of Angel Road and getting the contractor up there to remove tree debris by the tractor trailer-full gave us a huge leg up” heading into the March 12-13 storm, Gilleberto explained.

“I just want to recognize (Deming’s) efforts and also Mark (Clark) as the acting DPW Director for assisting in prioritizing operations and assisting Chris, and Fire Chief Stats. He and his crews were busy throughout the day on Thursday. They responded to two other communities for mutual aid during the course of the day. Reading had a fire earlier in the morning and Andover had a second-alarm fire mid-day that we responded to provide station coverage in Andover in addition to all the calls in town,” the T.A. said.

“These departments were all very busy and the management in these departments, Chief Stats included, did a fantastic job of marshaling the resources and distributing them appropriately,” Gilleberto said.

“I can’t lose sight of the veteran involved, which is Chief (Michael) Murphy. This is his first instance providing oversight for the public safety departments as the Public Safety Director and he took a very active role working with Chief Stats and Health Director Bob Bracey, who was involved in all the conversations in the event we needed a larger mobilization of a warming center or giving shelter, and also for making sure we take appropriate steps to protect public health in the event a restaurant is impacted by an outage.”

“It worked as we all expected it would. We evaluate things critically, see where there are lessons to be learned and we’ll use those lessons tonight and tomorrow,” Gilleberto told the Transcript Monday night.

“The state emergency management agency, MEMA, sends us briefings with the National Weather Service projections for forecasts, the onset times and we have a forecasting service that we use for public works and public safety purposes that we monitor,” the T.A. said.

“We had three meetings throughout the course of this last storm and dozens of phone calls. We had a planning meeting for this storm at 11 a.m. (March 12) attended by representatives of the police, DPW, fire, schools, health and human services,” Gilleberto said.

Looking at the forecast for March 13, he makes the call relative to non-emergency services coverage in town buildings other than school closures, which are determined by the superintendent.

Gilleberto admits predicting when it’s appropriate to close public buildings an inexact science. “We’ve seen enough instances where they say it’s going to be bad and it isn’t, or they say it isn’t going to be bad and it ends up being awful,” that has convinced him of the value of making these calls as late as is practical to have the best chase at hitting the mark correctly.