Published April 16, 2020
By MAUREEN DOHERTY
NORTH READING — Monday was not a good day to be a pine tree in North Reading.
The wet ground combined with sustained high winds and significant wind gusts felled trees in about a dozen neighborhoods throughout town. The felled trees had one thing in common — they were usually tall pines, either uprooted or snapped in two from several feet off the ground, and often took down power lines with them
There were a dozen neighborhood power outages throughout town, starting at about noon, according to Joyce Mulvaney, communications manager for Reading Municipal Light Department (RMLD). In the four-town area served by RMLD, just under 4,000 customers lost power, including 1,575 customers in North Reading, she said.
In total, RMLD crews responded to 42 “area outages” in North Reading, Lynnfield, Reading and Wilmington over the course of the storm, she said.
The outage volume became heavier starting at around 1 p.m., Mulvaney said, which was earlier than predicted.
“The crews had to stop restoration work due to the extreme winds from about 4:30 to 6 p.m. on Monday. Crews continued to perform isolation activities to maintain public safety during this timeframe,” she said.
“As of 10:15 p.m. on Monday night, there were about 750 customers without power across the four serviced towns,” Mulvaney said. But by 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning, power to 700 of those customers had been restored. Of the remaining 50 customers still waiting for their power to be restored at that time, 24 were North Reading customers.
Because of the outages throughout the town at 6 p.m., the Select Board opted to postpone its remote meeting until 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 15.
According to the National Weather Service, all of southern New England was significantly affected by the winds throughout the day. In the 12 hours between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. on Monday, observed maximum wind gusts in this part of the state ranged from 54 mph at both Bedford Airport and Bradford; 47 mph at Beverly Airport, 51 mph in Lynn and a high of 70 mph at the Blue Hills in Milton.
On Tower Hill Road, at least five pine trees came crashing down due to such winds, blocking the road until DPW crews could clear them. On Chestnut Street, near New Street, a large pine fell against a house with the top snapping off and landing on the roof. Several trees fell on Marblehead Street. On the other side of town, at Park Street West, a motorist escaped unscathed with a falling tree struck the corner of the roof of an SUV, on the driver’s side. These are just a few examples of the incidents that kept police, fire and DPW crews pretty busy throughout the storm and its aftermath.
Landmark sign falls
But the wind did not just topple trees. It also took down an iconic landmark on Winter Street, knocking the sign and pole for Richardson’s Garage into the roadway.
To say it was a loud bang when the pole and sign toppled over would be an understatement. “It sounded like someone dropped a snowplow from twenty feet in the air onto a trailer,” recalled Jean Richardson Russell.
“After I heard the smash, my neighbor called me and told me, ‘Jeanie, that’s your sign!’ And a neighbor came out and helped us move it out of the road. It was heartbreaking,” she said.
“The garage was built in 1924 by my grandfather. My grandmother used to sell pies from there,” she recalled.
Russell’s grandfather was Roy E. Richardson who started his trucking business here 96 years ago.
His son, Harold A. Richardson, took over the business in the late 1940s or early 1950s. “When my father got out of the service he came home and was driving a truck, and then he took over the gas station,” Jean said.
Harold’s son, Roy A. Richardson, who had started working there as a young boy of about 9 or 10, took over in the 1970s. Today, Harold’s grandson, and Jean’s son, Brett Russell, owns the property which is occupied by EcoMosquito.
The family is committed to restoring the sign and pole where it has always been, Jean said. She was also amazed that over 100 people left comments about the sign and their memories of the business and her grandfather, father and brothers after she posted a photo of it on her Facebook page and to the “I grew up in North Reading” site. She appreciated each one of them.