VIDEOS: Fire crews in Chester County divert around closed bridges adding minutes to response times.
“For somebody who’s waiting on the fire department or an ambulance to arrive, a minute means a lot,” Keystone Valley Fire Chief Brian Gathercole said.
Gathercole’s department serves Parkesburg Borough, which is the only municipality in the five county Philadelphia Metro with two closed bridges. The bridges on East and West Bridge street closed in the mid 1990’s when state engineers deemed them unsafe for traffic.
They are among 592 bridges in Chester, Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware and Philadelphia counties PennDOT rates in poor condition. That's nearly 16% of the region’s bridges.
“If a bridge gets to the point where it can’t carry trucks or cars, the prudent thing is to close it and we’ve seen that in Pennsylvania,” structural engineer Andy Herrmann said.