A thump in the night

Pothole shocks, unites stranded drivers

First there was a splash. Then what felt like an explosion. Hubcaps flying in every direction. And then it happened again. And again.

One by one, nine cars drove into the same innocent-looking puddle late Wednesday, oblivious to the massive pothole, lying in wait like the steel jaws of a trap, on a quiet street in Jamaica Plain.

And one after another, the drivers were forced to pull off to the side of the road, their tires savaged by the gorge, waiting for help in the subfreezing temperatures with a sense of despair.

"I just stood there, and thought, 'Could this be real? Could this be a hidden reality show?,' " said Jacquelyn Devine, 19, from Medfield, who was driving home from a friend's house when she hit the pothole on Centre Street shortly after 11 p.m. She and another driver walked down to the gorge to see it up close. Some went around inspecting other cars.

The Centre Street pothole created the type of havoc the New England region has seen since the freeze and thaw of Wednesday's storm left roads from Maine to Rhode Island looking like rural pathways - cracked and pocked and covered by puddles that hid craters beneath.

But the hazard from one road in Boston on a winter night triggered a unique sense of community.

Stranded in the cold and midnight darkness near the Arnold Arboretum, the drivers bonded in their anger and frustration, chasing down one another's hubcaps, borrowing cellphones to call for help, and eventually laughing at an ordeal that, at some point, just seemed like a bad joke.

Take that, Old Man Winter.

"I saw all these people and thought, 'Oh, great,' " said Jie Wu, 22, of Dedham, who was the seventh driver to pull over onto Westchester Road, off Centre Street, to wait for help. He picked up a hubcap, but wasn't sure whether it was his.

"It was a cold night, and I had a flat tire with a lot of people," he said. "What a weird night."

Wednesday's weather conditions were prime for the formula that creates the real pains of winter driving in New England, those canyons on side streets and highways that had drivers swerving to avoid a flat tire.

Here is how it happens:

Freezing temperatures cause asphalt to crack; water freezes in the crack, causing it to expand; and when temperatures thaw, the asphalt breaks apart. Then, the extra weight of buses and trucks chips away at the brittle asphalt until you have gorges like those Wednesday night on Centre Street.

Dennis Royer, the city's chief of public works and transportation, said the weather conditions the area has seen lately can cause a crack an inch wide to grow as much as 2 feet overnight. He said his agency has been trying to keep up with potholes across the city since December.

Royer said the only way to prevent potholes, or get them quickly repaired, is for residents to report them early enough so that they can be patched.

But with Wednesday's weather, where snow and sleet had fallen throughout the day - just after the area had seen an arctic freeze - potholes opened up throughout the region quicker than crews could respond, destroying tires and frustrating countless drivers in cities and towns across New England.

"It wasn't much fun," said Kathleen Smith, a Boston schoolteacher who was on her way home from a play when she hit the pothole on Centre Street and drove up a steep side street, barely able to make it because of a sheet of ice.

Few scenes, if any, were like the one on Centre Street, just before midnight. Car after car lined up.

Drivers couldn't change their own tires because the standard car jacks kept slipping on the icy roads.

A city crew patched the Centre Street hole yesterday, and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, which ultimately is responsible for maintenance on that part of the street, plans to inspect the area today.

Tow truck drivers who responded to the scene said it was the busiest of their night - and the worst.

"I thought it was somebody slashing tires, but to be talking about a pothole, that's ridiculous," said Alexander LaRosa, 24, a truck driver with Precision Auto Body of Mattapan, which handled calls for AAA.

Luis Rivera, another truck driver, said he thought his truck was going to crash after going through the pothole, and could only imagine what it was like to drive through it with a small car.

The tow truck drivers had to direct the cars like they were directing traffic so they could make repairs.

One of the cars that had to be repaired was that of a Globe editor, Kenneth Kaplan, whose vehicle with 130,000 miles had already weathered many such storms. He gave Abby Schlessinger, 26, a ride to work after her car had been towed.

"It was pretty bad, and I didn't even see it," said Caitlin Best, 22, who was leaving work at the nearby Italian Home for Children. "It came out of nowhere."

Milton Valencia can be reached at mvalencia@globe.com.