BRACES FOR MORE
Nor’easter flooding streets, downing power lines throughout area
midnight high tide.
MEMA had 10 shelters open to house displaced residents overnight, but White said that number could grow, including around Quincy and other hard-hit South Shore towns. In Duxbury, emergency responders were urging people not to travel unless it was an “absolute life or death emergency,” and the regional dispatch center reported “unprecedented requests” for help.
“We’re really not out of the woods,” White said last night. “We really want to focus on making sure our resources are in place.”
Forecasters said the high tide record of 15.16 feet set in Boston during the Jan. 4 storm was expected to stand, but the tide could reach 14.9 feet last night after hitting 14.67 shortly before noon. It sent water pouring into the Blue Line’s Aquarium Station and waves lapping into streets and onto restaurant patios.
The New England Aquarium is also closed today due to the storm.
“Today’s storm, the second major flooding event in as many months, leaves no doubt that we’ve entered a new era on our waterfront,” said Kathy Abbott, CEO of the nonprofit, Boston Harbor Now. “With climate change and extreme weather, we can expect to get hit harder, more often by storm surge with significant consequences for public access as well as our port economy.”
Further down the coast, “storm-force gusts” were expected to hang around into this morning on the Cape and Islands. Rainfall totals were slated to hover between 2 and 4 inches in most areas, but hit as high as 5 inches in some spots, according to the National Weather Service.
“Undoubtedly, this storm will result in changes to our shoreline,” forecasters warned yesterday, saying the “most severe erosion” was yet to come for some parts of the coastline.
White, of MEMA, said there were no reports of fatalities due to the storm as of last night.
But local officials reported rescues throughout the day in Quincy, where several people were stranded in cars before being scooped up in front-end loaders, as well as in Duxbury and other shoreline communities.
Damage wasn’t limited to the coast. In Woburn, fire officials were racing between calls for downed trees, including one that hit a woman and left her with a leg injury. In Wenham, officials were forced to evacuate homes after an underground natural gas line caught fire and sent a 30-foot fireball into the air.
Watertown police were scrambling to close Arsenal Street into the night when a row of 12 telephone poles collapsed into the street, apparently dragged down by high winds. Watertown police Lt. Ken Delaney said no one was injured and amazingly, no cars were damaged.