Top Stories - July 20, 2006

Saying Goodbye to Milena Del Valle

VASQUEZ DE CORONADO, Costa Rica -- The little boy covered his ears to block out the sounds, but the wails only grew louder.

Milena Del Valle's body had finally arrived from Boston and lay in a white coffin at St. Jorge funeral home. Morticians stood nearby, waiting to take it to a church. But first, Del Valle's three children wanted to see her. They looked inside the coffin and began to scream.

``Mami, Mami," yelled Jeremy Ibarra Mora, 17, Del Valle's youngest son, as his sister, Raquel, 23, and brother, Kaleb, 19, held him. The scene overwhelmed Del Valle's 4-year-old grandson, who cupped his ears as a family friend carried him away.

Del Valle, 38, was crushed to death more than a week ago when ceiling panels in the Interstate 90 tunnel connector fell on the Buick sedan in which she was riding. Yesterday, her children, who had last seen her in May, followed her coffin to a sprawling evangelical church north of San Jose, the capital city.

``God will help us figure out a way to move forward," her daughter, Raquel Ibarra Mora , said to those gathered at her mother's funeral. ``Pray you don't have to go through something like this."

Romney Closes Eastbound Ted Williams Tunnel

Governor Mitt Romney this afternoon ordered an immediate shutdown of the eastbound section of the Ted Williams Tunnel after state engineers re-inspected the concrete ceiling tiles and found two bolts that had loosed on the same panel.

Holding up photographs of the problem at an afternoon press conference, Romney pointed to a bolt that he said had slipped ½ an inch. The closure overruled an earlier inspection by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority that had found 25 problems area in the tunnel but determined that none of the faulty connections threatened to give way.

"It is perhaps an overreaction, but we want to err on the side of public safety,'' Romney said of his decision to close the tunnel today at noon.

Infinite Reasons to Hate the Traffic

Boston was hit with a confluence of traffic problems yesterday, paralyzing parts of the city for hours and further aggravating motorists already plagued with a rash of commuter problems.

Even as drivers coped with tie-ups and detours caused by the closing of Big Dig tunnels, a dump truck hauling sand rolled over on the Massachusetts Turnpike, spilling sand and diesel fuel on the roadway and closing westbound lanes for nearly two hours about midday. Work crews trying to repair a gaping hole caused by a ruptured water main diverted traffic from a portion of Massachusetts Avenue, forcing detours onto choked side streets and backing up cars all the way to Interstate 93.

With little public notice, city officials also changed one of the airport detours yesterday. Anticipating that thousands would clog streets as they headed to an afternoon game at Fenway or to concerts on City Hall Plaza and the Esplanade, officials directed airport-bound traffic away from the Government Center and Storrow Drive exits, where those events would bring extra traffic, to Exit 27 across the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge.

While some escaped problems and sailed smoothly to and from the city yesterday, many were caught in jams that even seasoned Boston drivers described as hellish.

``It's just a nightmare," said Peter Greulich, a 55-year-old land surveyor who commutes downtown from Wakefield. ``It's bad enough that they have a bad design flaw. But then that they can't even manage the traffic properly, it's just a little ridiculous."

Tropical Storm Beryl Weakens

Tropical Storm Beryl gradually weakened as it steamed up the East Coast this afternoon, churning north at 14 miles-per-hour while Nantucket and outer Cape Cod prepared for 50 mile-per-hour winds and up to 1½ inches of rain.

(Most of this article shamelessly copied from boston.com)