Accident on Bridge Street

I was about to put up a blip on Mt. Holyoke College when I heard news that sends a blipper running: A neighbor told us there was an accident on Bridge Street nearby.

This is it, about 500 yards toward the center of Northampton from our temporary apartment. Driving toward downtown, this pickup truck with a boat trailer somehow lost control, skidded, and slammed into the telephone pole (which would have fallen except for a guy line connecting it to a tree on the right).

The driver was unhurt (no one else was involved), but the street--a major one--was blocked off. They had to bring in a new pole, sink it in the ground (which meant cutting off the nearby gas line) and tie it to the broken pole. Only then could they remove the truck and the trailer. The accident probably happened around 4:30 p.m., I took this shot at exactly 6:00, and they told me it would be at least 90 more minutes before it would be resolved. In the meantime, traffic was at a crawl in our little portion of the town.

Exciting--but it followed very real drama and devastation yesterday afternoon in Springfield (20 miles to the south) and other areas hit by tornadoes and other severe weather--here's a link to an excellent map which I owe to my Canadian friend Edward Fenner. (FYI, Northampton is to the west of Amherst at the top of the map.) We were driving back from New York on I-91 but passed Springfield probably 90 minutes after the tornado.