Windy conditions throughout Friday took down trees and utility poles in Lynnfield and Saugus, causing power outages, including at Lynnfield High School, and road closures.
Winds reached up to 50 mph, according to the U.S. The National Weather Service. A wind advisory was issued from 7 p.m. on Thursday until 7 p.m. Friday for eastern, northeastern, southeastern, and western Massachusetts.
Firefighters and police officers responded to calls about fallen trees and power lines throughout the day. However, no structural damages were reported.
In Saugus, traffic became congested as state and town police closed off Route 1 South when telephone poles started leaning over the roadway, ready to topple due to strong gusts in the afternoon.
A tree also fell against a house this morning at 112 Vine St., barely missing the property, and another tree knocked down wires at 72 Adams Ave. No injuries were reported at either scene.
Director of Lynnfield Department of Public Works (DPW) John Scenna said outages were prominent around upper Main Street towards the Middleton town line, in the North Hill Drive neighborhood, on Walnut Street, and Essex Street where the high school is located
“We’ve been dealing with pretty high sustained winds since early morning. The greatest impacts were on Walnut Street and Gary Road this morning, and a tree took down some wires and snapped utility poles,” Scenna said. “The second most impactful one was actually on North Hill Drive and Lowell Street. That was a tree that took down wires, which then took down a utility pole.”
The DPW will continue to clear out any branches and debris that has fallen into the road around Lynnfield throughout the day.
Electricity was restored to Walnut Street in the afternoon, while the North Hill Drive neighborhood was estimated to come back some time Friday after crews cleared out the damage from the fallen utility pole.
Power at Lynnfield High School went out around 11 a.m., according to Superintendent Thomas Geary, and came back around 12:45 p.m. Scenna said.
However, the decision to send students home early was made shortly after the school lost power. Geary and principal Patricia Puglisi determined teaching wouldn’t be possible even with a backup generator partially restoring electricity.
“There wasn’t any real teaching and learning that was going to be able to happen, the phone lines were all put down, there was no internet, and we had no ability to finish cooking food for lunch,” Geary said. “With all those factors, we figured it was safest and most efficient to dismiss students as soon as we could do so safely.”
The Summer Street and Huckleberry Hill Schools were without phone service for a couple of hours, while Lynnfield Middle School was unaffected by the weather conditions.
As the internet was unavailable at the high school, Geary sent out a districtwide email to parents alerting them of the schools’ status and the LHS early dismissal around 11:45 a.m.
Students with cars were allowed to leave on their own, while other students were either picked up by parents or by buses. Geary said that the school was largely cleared out by 12:15 P.M.
You learn lessons every time you go through things like this, and we’ll have a debrief with the fire department, DPW, the high school staff, some of the high school administration next week to talk about what happened that might have been unexpected, but overall it was pretty smooth,” Geary said. “The kids did an amazing job. Everyone behaved well. It was a very orderly and efficient situation, all things considered.”
