By Christine McConville and Natalie Sherman
The Boston Herald
NORTH SHORE, Mass. — After another massive North Shore tanker fire, residents and fire officials say it’s time for the state to step in with new measures to control the truck traffic from local fuel facilities before more people are killed.
‘We need to have just one lane for all those trucks, and limit them to 35 miles an hour,’ said Allan Huberman, as he lifted debris from his fire-scorched family greenhouse business yesterday. ‘We’ve had four or five major accidents on that road, just in the last couple of years. People are going too fast, and you can’t, not with all that on-and-off traffic.’
‘It’s a serious concern of ours and has been forever,’ Saugus fire Chief James Blanchard said about the fuel trucks moving through densely populated areas. His fire crews evacuated 120 people from their homes early Saturday morning.
Blanchard said drug testing of drivers and cutting back on rotaries had helped, but now it may be time for other changes, such as widening sections of Route 1.
In nearby Everett, fire Chief David Butler agreed something has to change. Overturned tanker fires hit Revere’s Brown Circle in 2009 and in Everett in 2007.
‘We’ve got a lot of this coming out of my city, and we’re not getting any extra help because of it,’ Butler said. ‘There is an unfair strain put on some of these cities.’
But state Sen. Thomas McGee (D-Lynn) and Saugus selectman and state Rep. David Wong said authorities need to know what happened in the latest incident before calling for changes.
‘Was it speed, or sleep deprivation?’ Wong asked. ‘We want to prevent this from happening across Massachusetts, but first things first.’
State police said trucker Neal Michaud, 59, of Manchester, N.H., was hauling fuel northbound on Route 1 when he lost control of his truck, crashed through the guardrail and landed in the southbound lanes. State police still are investigating the cause. - Michaud died at the scene, and motorist Kevin Fitzgerald, 60, of South Hamilton suffered severe burns. About 11,000 gallons of gas poured onto the road and down nearby storm drains, then the fire began.
‘The flames made the Fourth of July look like a cookout,’ said Linda Kay, whose home is only about 30 yards from the crash scene. ‘It burned for 45 minutes.’
On Vine Street, Huberman woke to screams, and looked out and saw Penny Brook, a nearby stream, on fire. ‘It was 150 feet high,’ he said of the blaze that tore through his family’s industrial greenhouses, popping glass panels and demolishing the wooden-framed roof.
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