Can you spot the Cambridge/Boston line on the North Point bridge? Photo by Matthew Woolf
UPDATE: Power began coming back on around 6:20 p.m.
Reports pouring in of power outages from across the city: Kendall, Central and Harvard squares all without lights. Cambridgeport is dark. The Cambridgeside Galleria and the Museum of Science? Powerless. Even the Harvard Business School across the river might be out.
Some people got stuck in an elevator at Harvard. A family with a baby got stuck in an elevator at the River Street Whole Foods.
Cambridge Police report:
NStar says major transmission line failure to blame for the power outage in Cambridge. Will take several hours to fix.
The short might be in Central Square. Prairie Rose Clayton tweets:
Just biked through Cambridge. Central/Kendall all dark. Central smells heavily of ozone.
NStar reports 28% of the city is without power. Area 4 and Inman Square are OK.
The Red Line is dead, although a T spokesman denied a Twitter rumor that it was due to a deer getting hit at Kendall Square. "The Red Line is underground in Kendall Square," he said. Still, MBTADeer quickly sprang up.
Michelle, stuck on a 66 bus, tweets:
Major kudos to my MBTA bus driver who just asked us all if we'd just all like to go to the bar instead.
Kendall Square at rush hour. Photo by Brad F.
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Comments
Harvard sq too
By Crankycoffey
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 4:49pm
Harvard sq too
Oh deer
By hfc
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 5:07pm
I heard that the outage was started when a Red Line train hit a deer going into the tunnel toward Kendall station. Can anyone confirm this? Sounds a bit bizarre, but stranger things have happened...
MBTA says no
By adamg
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 5:45pm
See original post for update.
Our crumbling infrastructure
By Saul
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 5:07pm
Our crumbling infrastructure
What exactly is happening
By anon
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 5:11pm
What exactly is happening with the Red Line?
The T website just says there are major delays, without saying where or how much.
whereisthet has Red Line predictions that look reasonably normal.
The red line is running. I'm
By anon
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 5:47pm
The red line is running. I'm on it heading home from work in the Kendall Sq area. There are delays.
How bad are the delays? If
By anon
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 6:45pm
How bad are the delays?
If it's 5 minutes extra, I'll deal with it. If it's an hour, I'll walk.
"The Red Line is underground in Kendall Square"
By Spatch
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 5:23pm
Except for, you know, the part where it's not.
Doesn't the T have a separate power system?
By Ron Newman
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 5:24pm
I've seen cases before where it kept running just fine even though power was out on the streets above.
The last time that happened,
By anon
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 5:39pm
The last time that happened, I heard about stations where the lights were out, and there was no emergency backup lighting. That's terribly dangerous -- an underground space that can hold thousands of people needs battery backup lighting as a basic precaution.
Kendall in the Dark?
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 7:39pm
Heck, people can't even manage to not walk off the platform when it is fully lighted.
Cambridge PD not directing traffic anywhere
By anon
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 5:37pm
I find it hard to understand what they would be doing instead of directing traffic right now - it's dangerous (for cars and especially pedestrians) and well past the point of being obstructive to the flow of emergency vehicles were there an emergency.
I just walked from Kendall to Allston and saw the PD directing traffic at precisely ZERO of the 9 lights i walked by, including Western at Memorial Drive. The only two cop cars I saw were sitting at Central, but not directing traffic - they just closed Mass Ave to force cars to go around on side streets.
What could they be doing that they can't spare a single cruiser for Memorial Drive??? How would they respond to a more serious emergency?
Memorial Drive is a DCR/State
By hrose
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 6:10pm
Memorial Drive is a DCR/State highway road. Cambridge police not responsible.
I have heard that police are responding to various emergencies (people stuck in buildings).
same goes for state PD then
By anon
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 6:43pm
An hour is (or should be) more than enough time to respond to heavily trafficked intersections to direct traffic no matter who's responsible. If it's not, or if they don't have the resources, then they are clearly unprepared if there was some more bigger emergency.
And as I said, I didn't see a single police car or uniformed officer anywhere between Kendall and the River St bridge save for two cars in Central, and busy intersections like Mass Ave/Vassar, Mass Ave/Albany, and Mass Ave/Main St/Sidney St were an unpoliced free-for-all. I saw numerous near-accidents and there's gridlock that would seriously hinder emergency responders.
I saw police directing
By anon
Fri, 11/30/2012 - 4:16pm
I saw police directing traffic at Albany and Main at 5:15ish.
I saw Cambridge police at
By anon
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 6:47pm
I saw Cambridge police at several intersections. But they were standing around in the middle of the street talking to each other, not trying to help with the huge traffic jams.
Police are directing traffic
By anon
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 7:09pm
Rode the 69 bus HvdSq to Lechmere between 5pm & 6pm; we crawled slower than the normal crawl, east cambr much gridlock; i myself saw police directing traffic at various Cambridge Street (in East Cambridge) intersections, on the McGrath behind lechmere station, at Land Blvd intersection and past Sci Museum at Sorrow Drive@Leverett Circle (i didn't notice which were State, which were Cambridge). Around 5:45 Cambridge-bound car traffic from downtown Boston was so backed up that people trying to leave the No.Station garage could not move. Yowza.
Well...it could have been sleeting, too, but instead it's a lovely night with fabulous full moon rising, how 'bout that!
re: Police are directing traffic
By anon
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 10:45pm
Thanks so much! Very helpful report from the scene. The Yowza! made my day!