Flooding in the Boston tunnel was “quite a bit to deal with,” Jonathan Gulliver, the state highway administrator for Massachusetts’s Department of Transportation, MassDOT, said.
Rain floods Boston tunnel, knocks out power for thousands
An intense storm floods Boston highway tunnel and knocked out power for tens of thousands in the city.
The Boston tunnel was filled with 130,000 gallons of stormwater runoff this week after a torrential downpour led officials to close the historic city’s roadways.
Video shows people slowly driving through the tunnel as dark, murky water reaches halfway above their cars’ tires. The cars stick to one side of the tunnel, where the water level looks to be the most shallow.
Boston faced multiple complications, like debris in the road and fallen tree limbs, because of the torrential downpour, Jonathan Gulliver, the state highway administrator for Massachusetts’s Department of Transportation, MassDOT, said at a press event.
“However, the most serious and certainly most widely reported on issue that we had was in the tunnel,” Gulliver said.
The water that filled the tunnel was a max of 3 feet deep, according to the administrator.
Officials responded to “numerous calls for localized flooding across the state,” he said.
The flooding was “quite a bit to deal with.”
Watch drivers navigate through flooding in Boston tunnel
What was done about Boston tunnel flooding?
Around 400 feet of the tunnel’s roadway was impacted by the flooding, according to Gulliver.
“It was a lot of standing water that crossed about roughly about two lanes of traffic,” he said.
MassDOT had crews on standby, and they were dispatched when the department began receiving reports about the impacted roads.
The department closed the ramp that led to the impacted section of the tunnel and diverted traffic to the main surface roads.
Did pumps fail? Why did it flood?
The Boston tunnel has 40 pump stations throughout, according to Gulliver.
“None of those pump stations failed,” he said.
Instead, the flooding was caused by a clog near the main catch basin that collects the stormwater from the tunnels.
“So this required a more extensive response than we would typically need to clear,” said Gulliver.
Torrential downpour after a dry fall
A system moving in from Road Island on Wednesday brought the showers, Candice Hrencecin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, NWS, in Boston, told USA TODAY.
Boston received about four inches of rain, Gulliver said. However, Hrencecin said that it received around three inches.
Throughout December, the city usually receives a total of 4.3 inches of rain, Hrencecin said.
The storm came after the city faced a dry fall season and multiple brush fires, according to USA TODAY’s previous reporting. In October, the state saw over 100 brush fires in one week. The NWS also released special weather statements to warn people about the increased likelihood of brushfires starting.
The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation banned all open flame and charcoal fires in state parks “to prevent wildfires due to drought conditions.” Open burning in Massachusetts is also prohibited through January, according to the department.
Julia is a trending reporter for USA TODAY. You can connect with her on LinkedIn, follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, Instagram and TikTok: @juliamariegz, or email her at jgomez@gannett.com