“It’s one of the things that keeps me awake at night,” said Elsmere Fire Chief Paul LaFontaine. “We’re one call away from having something bad happen.”
LaFontaine issued the warning at a special meeting of the Elsmere City Council Tuesday night. The agenda included updates on the Garvey Avenue Bridge, whose weight rating was reduced from 27 tons to 13 tons by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet in late July, following a recent structural analysis. At the time, city leaders expressed worry the weight limit reduction would restrict emergency vehicles’ ability to move through the city quickly.
Yet the updates at Tuesday’s meeting were essentially that there were no updates.
In fact, Public Works Director Zerhusen said the recent severe weather has Norfolk Southern Railroad, which owns the bridge, “reallocating some of their resources.” As a result, repairs to the bridge remain in limbo.
The rail company owns the bridge, so the city has no direct control over its maintenance. LINK nky reached out to Norfolk Southern for comment, but they have not responded at the time of publication.
Elsmere Fire/EMS has two fire trucks, each weighing about 46,000 pounds (or 23 tons) without water. Each truck can carry 750 gallons of water, according to the fire chief. Federal law mandates that emergency fire vehicles have weight limits between 24,000 pounds and 52,000 pounds, i.e., between 12 and 26 tons, so even a vehicle on the small end wouldn’t be able to traverse the bridge.
The city has an even larger ladder truck on order, but it won’t be ready until February 2027, said the fire chief.
LaFontaine expressed a profound worry that, someday, the other shoe would drop, so to speak, and there would be an emergency situation his crews couldn’t reach in time because they could no longer use the bridge. Yes, there are alternative routes they could take, but it would inevitably entail a delay.
Moreover, if they had to call upon help from a neighboring department like Erlanger, that department wouldn’t be able to use the bridge either.
“We have put some things into place to try to overcome it, but there’s still going to be a delay, depending on which route we have to take, time of day, traffic, whether Main Street (which also intersects with the railroad) is blocked, those kinds of things,” LaFontaine said.
Both LaFontaine and a Council Member, Maria Vogt, had recently observed what appeared to be crews on the bridge, but the other council members weren’t confident it signified anything.
A representative from the railroad did not attend the meeting.
