Crime & Safety

Fire Chief 'Gearing up for Worst' as Arrigoni Construction Begins

Delayed EMS reaction times and significant traffic backups are the city's chief fears

Slow emergency response and downtown gridlock resulting from the 18-month Arrigoni Bridge repair project are the Middletown fire chief’s major concerns as construction begins Tuesday.

Chief Gary Ouellette is Sub-Committee Chairman of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce Arrigoni Bridge Committee, which has met monthly since January to flesh out police and emergency medical services response on both sides of the Connecticut River.

He says the project has its upsides and downsides.

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“It’s positive in the fact that we get to improve the bridge,” Ouellette says. “It definitely has some serious deficiencies, but there are definitely negative impacts because traffic will be backed up and people will avoid the area downtown.”

Which, he says, will have a negative economic impact on Main Street’s businesses.

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Even more important, Ouellette points out, is the effect on his crew’s 911 emergency reaction. “There will definitely be a delay in response times in terms of getting somewhere. Say if there’s a call on North Main and Stack Street, what would [ordinarily] take two minutes could take a three-, four-, five-minute response.”

A recent police review discovered that on the Arrigoni “there were 300 and something incidents in a year’s time, whether it was running out of gas or accidents,” Ouellette says.

With repairs slated to last more than a year and half, and lanes reduced to one on each side, complications could ensue.

“If a car breaks down, normally it doesn’t impact traffic,” Ouellette says. “The cops will have lanes cleared in 15 to 20 minutes, but now it’ll back up all the way down Main Street, down Route 66, into Portland. It could affect Washington Street traffic on Route 9 or even up to Grand Street, High Street.”

However, “by not being two lanes [going each way], people won’t be traveling at a high rate of speed, so there won’t be accidents like in the past — people out of gas or having breakdowns.”

For the first two weeks of construction, Middletown and Portland police will have a presence on the bridge as onsite first responders.

Monitoring the situation is at the top of Middletown Fire’s priorities, Ouellette says. “Our headquarters is right on Main Street, so we’ll be able to tell right away where the backups are.”

Considering every angle well ahead of time as part of the sub-committee has prepared officials as repair work begins.

“We’re trying to gear up for the worst,” Ouellette says. “We’re working on a game plan, but we can’t put it into place until we see.”

“Next weekend is the Fourth of July, so July 2nd should be the test,” he says, as holiday and summer traffic pick up.

“One good thing is, school is out, so we can gauge how it’s going over the summer, so we can get ready for the fall” and traffic from the Portland side, with “busses going over the bridge to Mercy, Vinal and Xavier" high schools has abated.

As construction continues, the bridge committees and city officials will be monitoring the situation and possibly making unprecedented adjustments if necessary.

“There’s some talk about, with the delay, alternating the start times of schools and there’s talk of some businesses, larger employers like Middlesex Hospital, Midfield Corporation, staggering their start times,” Ouellette reports. “We’re not sure exactly how it’s going to go.”

Peg Arico, director of public relations and communication at Middlesex Hospital, says, "the hospital is watching the construction process very closely and will do what it can to adjust, if necessary, once it has a sense of the real impact it will have on employees."

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