Mercury Spill Decontamination at Grafton Street School

One of the things I have been really excited to share with folks via this blog are some of the things I see and experience in my capacity as a Red Cross disaster services volunteer. It's something that I'm really proud to do and that I really enjoy doing, and it also makes for some unique explorations and photos. I'm excited to have my first opportunity to do that in this post.

As many of you know, there has been a fairly major mercury contamination at the Grafton Street Elementary School. A student brought approximately one pint of mercury to school on Thursday, and there was some period of time in which the school and other students were exposed to the mercury before the gravity of the situation was discovered. I assisted with the support operation on Saturday. One thing that the Red Cross is very good at is mobile feeding, so we set up in order to keep the various agents fed and hydrated.

Here are some of the things I saw.


These are items which were identified as being contaminated. They were removed and taken away in a sealed container shortly after I took this photo.



This is the EPA's Mobile Command Center.



This is the Red Cross of Central MA's Mobile Feeding Unit, which I was working from.



There were a number of city, state, and federal agencies working together.



Here's a MA DEP emergency response vehicle. Stacked to the right of it are the detection machines that were being used to "sniff" houses and personal effects for mercury.



Our spread: Coffee, tea, water, Gatorade, sandwiches, fruits, veggies, chips, and other snacks. Keep 'em fed, keep 'em working...



The teams were being deployed to check the houses of students from the school. Here is just one of the teams, checking the exterior of a home on Grafton Street.



Another shot of the EPA Mobile Command Center.



More federal agencies on the job, the Coast Guard and Health and Human Services I believe...?




When I see things like this, I see tax dollars being used well. About a year ago, I did a search and rescue operation in Townsend, MA. Various local police and fire departments, and the MA State Police were involved. There were probably 100+ people on the ground, search dogs, and a helicopter. To me, it was really heartening to know that if trouble befalls me deep in the woods someday, a lot of people are going to come looking for me. That's part of what defines a civilized society.

As a wrapup, I think the whole situation is being handled with an abundance of caution and an amazing level of professionalism. Mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin, and it's particularly risky when children are involved. It's good to see so many agencies working to assess and minimalize the exposure, especially in such an urban area.

The T&G had a reader's poll the other day, in which 62% of people thought that the response to this mercury contamination was an "overreaction". I'd love to know how many people in that 62% would volunteer to have mercury sloshed around in their homes...

Deluge Monday

It's taken me a bit to get these shots posted. These are from September 13th, when we had that ridiculous late summer thunderstorm. I tried to get to some of the danger areas before they became danger areas, such as the P&W bridge on Southbridge (which is a notorious flooding spot). An hour after I took these, they were fishing cars out of a lake under this bridge. The rain only caused minor flooding, but the manhole covers blew and the sewer system pumped water onto the street until it was five or six feet deep.

Here's the infamous flooding spot on Southbridge, right near Southgate and the railyard. Expand the photo, and you can see the manhole cover in the middle of the road, blowing water like a geyser.




This is Southbridge at Southgate, you can see where another manhole cover had blown and was spewing rainwater.




Here's Main Street, just up from WCUW...



Here's Park Ave. at State Liquors, which is an area that I have never seen flood before. The rain was so heavy at this point that the parking lot was dumping water onto the road faster than it could go down the drains. The curb looked like the lip of a dam. It was wild.

stART on the Street 2010

Sorry for the delay in getting a new post done! I have a few ready to go, but it's been a crazy week. Stay tuned for some photos from last Monday's "Great Deluge"...

stART on the Street has quickly become an institution in the city, one of those events that you simply cannot miss. Many people have discussed why this is, whether it's their great luck with weather, a byproduct of the burgeoning "buy local" movement, that our area has a particularly dense population of quality artisans, etc. I think these things are all true and worth considering, but I think there's two factors that stand above all:

1) This is truly a Worcester event. It's a great example of what an event can look like when the focus isn't "let's do that really cool thing Providence/Boston/Hartford does, and let's do it just like they do it". Yes, I understand that having a festival of the arts is not exactly a re-invention of the wheel, but the event seems designed and located to showcase what is special about our specific community. Near the south end of stART is the C.C. Lowell parking lot. C.C. Lowell, for those who don't know, is a Worcester institution. They've been an independent and local art supply store since they opened in 1852. Up the avenue a bit is L.B. Wheaton, an independent and local photography supply store in business since 1895. There are a bunch of small shops right by L.B. Wheaton selling artisinal goods. Towards the north end of the festival, you have one-of-a-kind spots like Jelly's Discs and That's Entertainment!. If you haven't been to That's Entertainment!, you haven't been to Worcester. At Elm Street, you have what I would consider to be an unlikely partner in Barnstorm Cycles, although custom building motorcycles is definitely art. Then, the north end of stART is capped with Elm Park and the Art in the Park installation. This doesn't even account for the local booth vendors, who are far too numerous to mention. It all just works so well together. These businesses have embraced the event, and it has embraced them. Which brings me to my second point...

2) stART is run by a crew of people who love it. If you want to have a great event, don't start from city government and work down. Start from a group of people with a passion to showcase, and work up. I'm not going to scream about city government like many people do, but one thing I'm sure of is that city government does not know as much about running a successful arts festival as artists do. By keeping this event in the hands of people who truly care about growing the integrity along with the crowd size, we all win. This year's expanded focus on showcasing demonstrations by artisans is just one example of keeping the event fresh and based in an appreciation of creativity. A HUGE shout-out to the stART organizers and volunteers.

Anyway, here's some photos I took at this year's event. They are in no particular order of time or importance. If you'd like to see more, my entire album is open to all via Facebook:

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Central MA Roller Derby prepares for a scrimmage demonstration.

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Even at day's end, there's still a crowd...

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The Community Quilt comes together.

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Robert Grogan works on his addition to the quilt.

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The crowd, looking north from L.B. Wheaton...

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Jon Short, one of my favorite Worcester musicians. Jon has the blues, will travel...

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The crowd in front of C.C. Lowell.

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Three of the approximately two million pieces of art I saw yesterday...

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Park and Elm, looking south.

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My friends Dani and Amy selling their wares...

Reader's Choice

I noticed that my shots thus far have been mostly Main South oriented. This makes sense, as currently I'm living in Main South, and my office is just south of it. However, there's a whole lot of city out there to document!

So, here's your chance to order me around: Pick a neighborhood you'd like me to explore! If you have a great site off the beaten path, that's even better, but otherwise just give me a section of town and I'll go explore it on my own. A street suggestion would be great as a starting point, but is not required. For the sake of broadening my horizons, let's skip Main South, downtown, and East Highland/Elm Park, as I know those areas very well already. Leave a comment on this post with your suggestion.

If I get no suggestions, I'll be sad. If I get one, I'll go do it. If I get more than one, I will choose one to do first, and then try to cover the others as time permits.

GO!

Renewal (and Abandonment) in Main South

Took a lunchtime drive today, and I saw that the front sliding security doors at the former Ha Tien Market on Main Street were open and there's some renovations happening inside:

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This is good news for lovers of our Vietnamese markets and for Main South residents in general. Ha Tien is one of the only grocery options in this neighborhood, and had a reputation for freshness and value. It was my favorite Vietnamese market in the city (sorry Mekong), and I was devastated when it was destroyed in a fire back in March.

Here are some pictures that I took during the fire:






I'm certainly glad to see that it looks like they're going to be reopening at some point.

There's some other rebirths happening in the neighborhood. The Dunkin' Donuts renovation at the corner of Main and Hammond seems to be moving along quickly:

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I also happened upon some long-awaited work being done at the brick apartment buildings on LaGrange Street. My office used to be right behind these buildings, and after a lot of noise about a fixup coming, they sat untouched for years. Looks like that's finally starting to change:

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One piece of land that I'm sure is very familiar to the patriarch of the Wormtown Fleet remains empty, however:

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For those who are not familiar, this is the former site of Yellow Cab's headquarters.

School's In- Part 2

Here's a few more spots where the roads become much more crowded and things become much more lively once college starts for the year.

This is Sever Street (pronounced "seever" for any newbies or out-of-towners) between Elm and Highland, home of the Becker College campus (on the left).

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Fun fact about the Becker campus: This used to be the Worcester Agricultural Fairgrounds, which was the site of the first perfect game in baseball history, as well as a famous KKK rally and anti-KKK riot.

I shot across Highland St. and took this shot at the West Street entrance to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

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School's In!

Love it or hate it, Worcester is a college town. It cracks me up when I see apartment listings that mention they're located in a "college neighborhood". Seriously, is there any neighborhood in this city that couldn't be considered a college neighborhood?

For the record, I happen to love that Worcester is a college town. I didn't move here to go to school, but I did spend my first year here living that experience vicariously through my Clark friends and roommates, and that's a big part of what made me fall in love with this city in the first place. Plus, it just feels so empty when the students are away. You notice it when you go out to eat, out to the bars, or just driving around. Academia is in the pulse of the city, and that pulse just seems weak when school is out.

These are shots I took today on Florence St., between Maywood and Downing. Most of you will recognize it as the main drag connecting Clark University's on-campus and off-campus residences.

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Three weeks ago, this street would've been mostly empty. For the next eight months, it'll be very hard to park a car anywhere along this stretch...

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I have so many memories of good times on this street. I can attach a story to almost every apartment, porch, yard, and section of sidewalk along this stretch. As just one example, I once got several beverages into a winter's night and took pictures from the top of the parking garage (on the right in photo #2) during a nor'easter. By the time I got too cold to stay up there, the snow drifts were so high that I couldn't walk down the outdoor stairwells, I had to slide down them on my ass...

I'm sure many of you have fond memories here too, you may have even been a part of mine...Share them!

Welcome back Clarkies, and students at all of Worcester's institutes of higher learning!