Great Barrington — Residents and businesses, primarily on the west side of Main Street — including Town Hall — lost phone and Internet service Tuesday after a Berkshire Gas contractor, installing a new pipeline, drilled into Verizon cables at the corner of Main and Castle streets, severing four of them.
“They really got ’em,” observed one Verizon worker, as crews winched a damaged cable out of a cavernous hole dug into Castle Street. “And it will really cost ’em.”
Verizon spokesman Phil Santoro said service should be back up by late Wednesday night.
The installation of a new gas line is part of the Main Street Reconstruction Project, a $5.4 million state Department of Transportation plan to improve the one-half mile stretch on Route 7 from St. James Place — also known as Taconic Avenue — north to Cottage Street. The project will replace roads and pavements, “improve sidewalks, drainage, curbs, traffic signals, crosswalks, and lighting,” according to the Town of Great Barrington. The reconstruction will also add better crosswalks, and bike lanes.
Santoro said that only some Great Barrington customers — and only a few in Alford — were affected. Santoro added that E911 service and the hospital went unscathed by the cable damage.
“We have been working nonstop at the scene throughout the night, and have made very good progress in restoring service for our customers,” he said in a phone conversation Wednesday mid-day. “Most customers are already back in service.”
The reconstruction project has been controversial among some Great Barrington residents and business owners, who fret that retail business might suffer as a result of the improvement extravaganza on the town’s busy strip.
The cause of phone and Internet loss was a mystery among residents whose service cut out yesterday, until Great Barrington resident Nancy Rogers sent an email to HillGB, a Google group for residents who live on Castle Hill, many of whom were without service. Rodgers had just returned home from town.
“I just walked past a very deep hole in the street with seven Verizon people staring into it,” she wrote.
And the great mystery was thus solved.
Triplex owner Richard Stanley said he wasn’t aware of any loss at his businesses, including the Triplex. He didn’t understand all the fuss.
“This is much ado about nothing,” he said. “Stuff happens.”
Stanley has, however, installed cameras on top of several downtown buildings to monitor traffic flow, so that he can see for himself whether the roadwork is clogging the pistons of town commerce.
