Franklin county commissioners said announcements of a bridge closure on Highway 65 last week were handled poorly.
The Department of Transportation closed the bridge over Graham Creek on Highway 65 last Wednesday after inspectors discovered damage to the bridge during a routine bridge inspection.
The bridge has since been reopened.
County Commissioners, however, said that the announcements to the public were handled poorly, and in one instance actually led to an injury.
The bridge closure was announced through Franklin County’s reverse 9-11 system which allows emergency officials to provide information by telephone to every home in the county.
The problem was that the calls continued late into the night and according to County commissioner Bevin Putnal one elderly lady broke her hip trying to get to the phone.
Putnal said the notification system needs to be discontinued if the problems can’t be fixed.
According to Lois Swoboda of the Apalachicola Times, the problem was actually a human error made by the company that provides the service.
She said that the system is supposed to make 800 calls every hour, but someone at the company had deleted two zeroes so that it was only making 8 calls an hour.
That led to call continuing throughout the night.
That problem has since been fixed.
There was another issue in that it was announced that the bridge was reopened before it actually was but local sheriff’s officials made sure that no one went over the bridge before it was safe.
http://www.oysterradio.com e-mail manager@oysterradio.com with comments
No comments:
Post a Comment