By Liora Engel
The Keene Sentinel
KEENE, N.H. — Due to recently announced bridge restrictions, fire trucks carrying hoses, ladders and first responders will have to reroute to Roxbury Street to access parts of East Keene in an emergency, the Keene Fire Department said.
The Roxbury Street detour will delay these vehicles by about a minute while they’re responding to a fire in that area, according to Deputy Chief Gregory Seymour. If access to Roxbury Street via Central Square is blocked, fire equipment would take an extra five to eight minutes to arrive at a scene, he added.
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Seymour said rerouting to Roxbury Street won’t affect the department’s response to fire in that area. But if a fast-moving blaze erupts in the densely populated neighborhood and Roxbury Street is blocked, he didn’t rule out heavy fire equipment traveling over the restricted bridges, despite the weight concerns.
The detour was put in place earlier this month after the city imposed a 10-ton limit on two Keene bridges that offer a more direct route to that neighborhood. Built in the 1920s, bridges carrying Spring and Beaver streets over Beaver Brook have “exceeded their intended service life,” the city said in a November news release.
The city intends to eventually replace the two red-listed bridges.
Ambulances and passenger vehicles with mobile command centers weigh less than 10 tons and can still travel over either bridge, Seymour said, meaning these vehicles will likely arrive at a scene first.
The bridge restrictions will not affect search and rescue teams, whose job is to help people who may be trapped inside a building, according to Seymour, who said these teams typically travel in ambulances. Since search and rescue often begins before firefighting efforts, the department will not have to change its operations at a fire scene in East Keene.
The five- to eight-minute delay if Roxbury Street is not accessible would change operations, however, he said.
That could be an issue when the first phase of the downtown infrastructure project, slated to begin next spring, unfolds in Central Square, Seymour said. He added the fire department will work closely with the public works department to ensure fire trucks have access to Roxbury Street during construction.
If construction hampers access to Roxbury Street for a time, Seymour said the fire department will get notice from public works staff and negotiate alternative routes, perhaps by talking to homeowners or landlords about accessing parts of East Keene through parking lots or private properties.
Public Works Director Don Lussier said fire trucks may be able to cut through the parking lot of the old middle school on Washington Street, which has a parking lot that connects Spring to Roxbury streets east of the square.
The city had a couple of meetings with fire department leadership to discuss the downtown infrastructure project and how it might affect access to Roxbury Street, according to Lussier.
He said the city already planned on having at least one lane open in each direction around Central Square throughout the construction, and that the fire department has also been invited to weekly meetings with the contractor to get a sense for any potential disruptions to access.
The city is also working with the N.H. Department of Transportation to reallocate funds for repairing a bridge on Maple Avenue to instead replace the Beaver Street bridge more quickly, he said.
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