BY DAVE CHOATE
A group of 260 children had a chance to find out just how fun it was to stay at the YMCA when a road closure kept some of them there longer than usual.
On Monday, July 23, police Capt. Michael Sullivan said a “very large” tree crashed down on a power line, necessitating road closure along a stretch of Goffstown Back Road while police and road crews worked to remove the debris. Motorists were rerouted through Black Brook to Tibbetts Hill Road or vice versa, depending on which direction they were arriving from.
Sullivan said the removal and repair took until about 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 24. The road was closed to traffic from Diamond Lane to Henry Bridge Road and from Tirrell Hill Road from Goffstown Back Road to Thyme Way.
The traffic and delay side effect of that partial closure and cleanup was the one Goffstown resident Michael Pelletier and his wife found themselves confronting early Monday evening.
“When those power lines went down, traffic was rerouted so that you had to go through Manchester to get to the Y,” Pelletier said. “I called my wife at about 4:10 (p.m.) and she left from Bridge Street, but she didn’t get there until about 5:35.”
Pelletier said the rush hour traffic was more snarled than usual as a result of the closure, leaving the parents of more than a dozen children waiting in traffic to get them. He said his wife was confronted by a road closure sign along the stretch of Goffstown Back Road leading to the Y from Manchester, but that the sign was later changed to local traffic only.
“I was helping her get there via Mapquest. At one point, she had to go all the way back to Manchester. I just think there should’ve been more information or a traffic controller down there,” Pelletier said.
Sullivan said the sign was changed as a result of responses from motorists.
“We realized it was confusing people, so the sign was changed,” he said.
YMCA branch director Debbie Saunders said parents typically pick up their children from about 4 to 6 p.m., and that most were a little later than usual. She said that almost none of the 260 children in the daily camp program were picked up after 6 p.m., however.
She said it was largely business as usual at the facility.
“We did the same things we always do, group games, sing-alongs, and the like. They were having fun, so we just let them know their parents might be a little bit late,” Saunders said.
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