COMMENTARY
Bruce Andriatch: Long Street must reopen —but not yet
If there were any doubt about whether normalcy has returned to Long Street, the marked State Police SUV at the corner of Clarence Center Road with the trooper in the driver’s seat removes it. So do the signs that say “Road Closed” at that corner and every other possible way in and out.
The message is clear: not yet.
The residents who were forced out of their neighborhood when Flight 3407 fell out of the sky Feb. 12 have been told they could return home. The investigators and the emergency responders are gone. The parking lot of the Clarence Center Fire Hall, once jammed with vehicles, is almost empty.
The closed roads are the only visible reminder of what happened here.
Town officials will not say when Long Street will reopen to traffic. Supervisor Scott Bylewski said that there is a plan to do that but that its details are being kept confidential. In essence, he said, the town is trying to keep the street’s residents “as protected as possible” as they try to resume their lives.
The balance between doing that and trying to move forward is not easy, he said.
“You want to protect your privacy, but on the other hand, you don’t want it to have a Big Brother feel to it,” he said.
Long Street is not what many consider a “typical” Clarence neighborhood, not that there is such a thing, anyway. The houses are older, not very large, and are close to the street, which barely accommodates two cars heading in opposite directions. Imagine a street in the Village of Hamburg or the Town of Tonawanda or North Buffalo. If even 100 cars a day are added to the traffic flow, it would have an impact.
Keeping everyone but the residents off Long Street is not causing a hardship to anyone, because there really is no reason to be on Long Street unless you live there or are visiting someone who does. It can be used as an alternative route for drivers who want to avoid the intersection of Clarence Center and Goodrich roads, but traffic is so light there at most times that it’s not much of a shortcut.
Having said that, a time will come when people will want to see the place where the plane crashed—not the gawkers of the days just after the crash who apparently wanted to see the wreckage, but people who feel a connection to what happened and might want to pay their respects for the lives that were lost.
“I think people need to make it real in some way,” said Nancy Smyth, dean of the School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo. “It’s one thing to see images on TV; it’s another to actually go to the place where it happened.”
People who will want to see Long Street or those who go to the site of the World Trade Center or others places of great tragedy often say they are seeking closure. Smyth said they also are trying to come to grips with what happened.
“The power of an event like this is it touches people way beyond the circle of immediate people who lost folks,” she said. “It’s one of the only ways for the people who don’t have a personal connection to find a way to connect and have some meaning with it.”
Bylewski said the town already has informally discussed the idea of doing something to honor the victims of Flight 3407, either on the site of the crash or somewhere else in town so that people will have that connection. And he acknowledges that Long Street will eventually have to reopen to the general public and that the town will be called on to deal with whatever happens next.
That day will come. Just not yet.
Log into MyBuffalo to post a comment
MyBuffalo is the new social network from Buffalo.com. Your MyBuffalo account lets you comment on and rate stories at buffalonews.com. You can also head over to mybuffalo.com to share your blog posts, stories, photos, and videos with the community. Join now or learn more.
Reader comments
Learn more about our moderation system.