Cutting Dangerous Corners

 45 Phillips Street

So you have to feel bad for the current owners of Bruno's Pizza who, through no fault of their own, suddenly had to shell out big bucks to safely deal with the three old gas storage tanks with old gas still remaining,  unexpectedly uncovered during the Main Street reconstruction project.

Since the conversion from gas station to food service happened in the 1970s the previous owner -- Bruno Matarazzo -- probably had no idea those tanks were there as well.

But the recent oil tank problem at 45 Phillips Street is another matter altogether.  When you pack more than the four unrelated tenants allowed by law into a one family wood frame unit -- especially a demographic that likes to party -- an extra amount of wear and tear should be expected.

And since Mr. Gharabegian's property card for 45 Phillips shows not a single permit pulled for any improvements since he purchased the mansion back in 2007, obviously he's not the neater half of The Odd Couple

While on cite doing a follow up investigation at the problem house, Amherst Fire Department Assistant Chief Don McKay noticed an oil stain in the basement and a hole in the floor that looked as though oil had drained down it, and a brand new oil storage tank, installed without a permit.

Apparently the original 275 gallon tank was damaged during a basement party.  

In addition to the the $400 in fines levied against Mr. Gharabegian for all the various infractions related to the dangerous practice of fly-by-night installation of a potentially explosive product, the Department of Environmental Protection is also investigating whether 45 Phillips will become Amherst's Love Canal. 

45 Phillips

Have a nice day Mr. Gharabegian.

DUI Dishonor Role

While there were no party house noise/nuisance arrests for the second weekend in a row, the pervasive impact of the party culture was still felt in the scary form of irresponsible individuals piloting a potentially deadly weapon while under the influence of alcohol.

Over the weekend APD arrested four drunk drivers, two of them in the heart of the downtown.   While I keep saying it only takes one to slaughter an innocent family, pedestrian or cyclist, what number gets your attention?  How many near misses did each of these four have prior to the long arm of the law reeling them in?

Because every drunk driver bagged, had been driving for a while. Take this guy for instance:  Cruising through the center of town at 1:00 AM early Saturday morning with his high beams on and two flat tires.  Yeah, that will get you noticed.  He was heading north on North Pleasant and took a left onto Hallock Street, where he was safely pulled over, administered a Field Sobriety Test, which he failed.

North Pleasant Hallock Street intersection 

Shane Bowen, 5 Eastern Ave, Northampton, Ma, age 21.  DUI, operating to endanger, failure to use care in turning.

Sunday was the most dangerous day to have been on our roads as the other three arrests all occurred in the early morning hours.

At 2:26 AM in the main intersection of town center Christopher Phann, 14 Robinson St, Lowell, MA, age 20 ran a red light and was arrested on Main Street for DUI.

At 2:49 AM on Meadow Street in North Amherst Joshua Quinn, 12 Fairmont St, Elmsford, NY, age 19 was arrested for DUI, speeding, under 21 possession of alcohol, open container, alcohol in vehicle.  

At 5:44 AM  on South East Street Michelle Buonasaro, 20 Robinwood, Norwood, MA, age 22 was arrested for DUI and failure to stop.

After The Fall: Cover Up?

 UMass Du Bois Library

Did UMass/Amherst, still reeling from a reported gang rape incident where alcohol played a strong supporting role, purposely sweep under the rug the unfortunate death of  19-year-old Sydne Jacoby because alcohol probably played a strong supporting role?  Well ... yes.

As some of you may remember, I broke the unfortunate story of the gang rape, 18 hours before my bricks-and-mortar media friends formed a pack and descended on the UMass Police Station.  My ultra-reliable source on Saturday said UMass was going to go public with the story at a press conference at 1:00 PM Monday, so I published on Sunday evening.

By noon Monday my source thought the press conference was not going to happen.

A public statement acknowledging the rape (carefully avoiding the word "gang") appeared on the UMass news website only an hour before the press conference, which did happen -- but looked very hastily thrown together.

Now, only five weeks later, the pattern continues.

UMass has always acknowledged the sudden death of a student with a public statement, no matter the circumstance, from suicide to a routine auto accident. And if they had issued a simple statement on Monday November 19, the day Jacoby died, simply acknowledging the death -- even if withholding her name -- that would probably have been the end of it.

But when the local paper announces the sudden death ten days after the fact, and then does not even report the name of the victim because UMass refuses to release it, you have to wonder.  One key detail is reported as the Gazette quoted AFD Chief Tim Nelson (who was assured the name of the victim would not be used) stating the young woman had been drinking.

My other first responder sources say it was a quite a lot.  And a self described "best friend" posted to a Facebook page on November 18 -- two days after the fall, when Jacoby was still in a coma -- soliciting prayers:

"Unfortunately on Friday night, Sydne was the victim in a terrible accident. She was leaving a party with her two friends and wasn’t feeling well due to her high level of intoxication. It was then that she fell backwards and crashed hard onto the concrete, hitting her skull and causing her to immediately become unconscious. When the ambulance had arrived she went into cardiac arrest twice, but thankfully they were able to bring her back both times."

Obviously alcohol played a role in this terrible tragedy.  Obviously UMass doesn't want people to know that.  Question is who -- or what -- are they trying to protect?

A Sad Rewind

Fearing Street, near UMass/Amherst 

On Friday November 16 at 23:43 hours  (11:43 PM) an Amherst Fire Department ambulance responded to Fearing Street, a well-traveled route students use to get to or from a party.

A vibrant young woman, out with friends for a night of fun (that, naturally, involved alcohol) fell, hitting her head on unforgiving concrete.

When paramedics arrived, she was unconscious.  Standard AFD practice for a an unconscious patient due to head trauma is to bypass nearby Cooley Dickinson Hospital and go all the way to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield.

Two months ago on a particularly rowdy party weekend a young male student, out drinking with his friends in the late night hours, fell near the Newman Center hitting his head and was rushed unconscious to Baystate Critical Care Unit.  Fire Department personnel were amazed when he was released the following afternoon, having earlier stated somberly it "did not look good."

This time, however, it was not good.  This time the young student died.   Sydne Ilyse Jacoby was only 19. She leaves behind a mother, father, brother and 837 friends on Facebook.  500 mourners turned out for the funeral service.  Her local newspaper described her as "an angel."

That mid-November weekend AFD transported five students from the UMass campus to the Cooley Dickinson Hospital for being ETOH, a shorthand code for ethanol -- drinking alcohol -- or in these particular cases, way too much of it.

Amherst Police also busted three party houses that weekend, arresting nine "college aged youth" for noise and nuisance infractions.  One house with four arrests were all young woman.

At another of the houses a 17-year-old girl was arrested for being a minor in possession of alcohol, partying with over 500 young adults packed into one family house only zoned for four tenants.

Police also arrested a drunk driver who almost ran over an officer who had stopped another vehicle.

All in all, sad to say,  in the picturesque college town of Amherst, home to three institutes of higher education, a rather routine weekend.  Now suddenly, sadly, made far from typical.

Until it happens again.

Triplets!

 3rd tank, also with one foot of the volatile liquid remaining, was buried along eastern side of building

The old expression "bad things come in threes" certainly played out over the past week for a small business located at the highly visible intersection of Main/Triangle/Dickinson Street just below the Emily Dickinson Museum .

The first underground storage tank, resembling a large aerial bomb dropped from a B52, was bad enough considering it lay almost directly under the main entry immediately in front of the building.

Assistant Fire Chief Don McKay was instantly suspicious there would be a second  due to a large connecting pipe visible on top of the tank, which sure enough proved accurate. The third tank alongside the building came as more of a surprise, kind of like the initial discovery.

The first gas pump appeared in Amherst in 1905 on the corner of Kellogg Avenue planted there by Melrose Paige. Probably installed properly, since Mr. Paige went on to become Amherst Fire Department Call Chief in 1911, and by 1925 he was Chair of the Amherst Select Board.

At first, no permit or license was required to sell gasoline, although this being Amherst, regulation soon followed.    The first license to sell gasoline was recorded at the Town Clerk's office in May, 1914.

By the late 1930s Amherst hosted 24 "filling stations" and the citizens did not want a 25th. At a routine Monday night Select Board meeting in July of 1939, eighteen citizens turned out for a public hearing to protest a gas station permit for a proposed business (by a large oil company) on North Pleasant Street.

Their battle cry was a simple but inflammatory one: North Pleasant Street, the busiest commercial street in Amherst, should not become "gasoline alley".

The Select Board denied the permit.

The building on Main Street where the underground tanks were just discovered is located very near Classic Chevrolet, formerly Paige's Chevrolet, founded in 1883 -- the first auto service business in Amherst.

Patterson's Garage, Main Street Amherst circa 1940 

Prior to becoming a pizza shop it was an entrenched location for auto service: Ledoyt's Garage shows up in 1923, two years later becoming Bilger's Garage, and in 1936 Main Street Garage.  Between 1940-1950 the location was operated as Patterson's Garage and, finally, Dick's Auto Service operated by Dick Stedman.

 Amherst Record ad 11/28/1963

A valve fitting found on one of the tanks was manufactured by the Evertite Corporation, a business established in 1935, indicating that Main Street Garage is probably responsible for the tanks -- although they could have gone in years earlier and were added to or replaced after 1935.

Now of course the explosive question:  how many more large underground tanks, with gasoline still in them, remain buried and forgotten around town?

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The tanks, measuring 5 feet in diameter and 16 feet long, were peeled open after a chemical solution poured in to neutralize explosive fumes, siphoned,  and then replaced with an equal amount of concrete.  Old gas was taken to a "waste burning facility" by New England Environmental, Inc so it did not completely go to, err, waste.

Board of Health regulations banning underground tanks in the aquifer recharge zones was a volatile issue in 1983, vociferously protested by local farmers, gas stations owners and others with underground tanks. Those who, according to then Board of Health Chair Davis Ross, "had a vested interest in not being regulated."

Sweet Downtown Addition

Glazed Doughnut Shop, Carriage Shops North Pleasant street

The new gourmet doughnut business -- appropriately called "Glazed Doughnut Shop" -- that opened last month on the northern town center outskirts debuted already using paper coffee cups because they assumed the Styrofoam ban would pass.

This is after all, Amherst. And who would better know Amherst than a pair of ARHS graduates, high school sweethearts no less.  In addition to knowing the town, Keren and Nick Rhodes also know doughnuts -- and how much work it takes to make them right.

Yes, their main competition, with three establishments in town, is Dunkin' Donuts -- but the abbreviated way they spell doughnuts should tell you something.  

More variety than Dunkin'

An Unexpected Find

 Bruno's Pizza, Main Street

While maybe not as dramatic as uncovering an unexploded WW2 bomb, the surprising find on Main Street could probably have done almost as much damage:  two underground gas storage tanks, one 4,000 gallons the other 3,000 gallons, each with many hundreds of gallons of the dangerous liquid still in them, buried and forgotten for almost 100 years.

Looks like something dropped from a B-52

The full-reconstruction Main Street road project, which is expected to be completed next week, as it made its way up towards town center uncovered the long forgotten gas storage tanks, setting in motion a series of public safety responses.

Amherst Fire Department coordinated with Department of Environmental Protection and local Hazmat expert New England Environmental, Inc sampled the soil around the two tanks to test for contamination. And that is probably the only good news, as there was no leakage.

But the first tank had 1,000 gallons of gas and the second one 500 gallons that needed to be carefully siphoned into a truck with a large holding tank. Both underground tanks will stay where they lay but will be refilled with 3,300 gallons of concrete and paved over.

2nd tank was even closer to the building 

Apparently, well before the Main Street business became a pizza shop, it was an auto repair facility -- and since it was on heavily traveled Main Street, it also had gas pumps out front (one regular the other high test).

The shop became a pizza parlor in the early 1980s, called "Whole Wheat Pizza" and was one of the first establishments in Amherst to specilaize in delivery.

Bruno Matarazzo purchased the business in 1994 giving it a new name that it carries to this day.  Bruno sold the business and moved uptown, where he founded Antonio's Pizza.