After spending two-hours idling in the Sydenham River waiting for someone to open the Baseline Bridge in Wallaceburg, a number of American tourists aboard a large cruiser turned around and headed back home on Saturday.
Officials with the Municipality of Chatham-Kent say a faulty cell phone is the reason the boaters calls were not answered.
Wallaceburg’s Gerrit Dykhouse, a member of the Bluewater Chapter of the Antique and Classic Boat Society, said the local group teamed up with the Michigan Chapter of the club for an outing on Saturday.
“These two groups combined this past Saturday and made a trip into Wallaceburg with a dozen boats, mostly runabouts but also a few larger cruisers,” Dykhouse said. “For a number of the Americans it was the first time they had visited the ‘Burg.”
Dykhouse said all went well until they reached the Baseline Bridge in Wallaceburg and discovered nobody was available to open the bridge for the larger cruiser.
“The numbers posted on the bridge got no response,” he said. “Even the police were called in the hope that they might have an answer for us.”
Dykhouse said after idling in the river for about two hours, the captain gave up and returned to Port Lambton and eventually returned to Sarnia.
“This vessel was a trawler and it would take approximately six hours in each direction to make this trip from their home port,” he said. “Not being able to land his vessel in town and join the rest of us for lunch was beyond frustrating for that captain and highly embarrassing for us as hosts and organizers.”
Miguel Pelletier, Director of Public Works in Chatham-Kent, said this was an “unfortunate” and “isolated” occurrence.
Normally the way it works for us from Public Works is that we have an operator on call during the weekend,” Pelletier told the Sydenham Current.
“His phone number is on the bridge and also on our website and the boaters call that. There was a problem with the cellphone so when they tried to call him, it wasn’t ringing. They noticed there was a problem with the phone in the afternoon and it got corrected so we did have coverage for the rest of the weekend.”
Pelletier added: “Based on memory here we haven’t had an incident like this before when somebody didn’t show up to open a bridge. It’s an unfortunate situation and I feel bad for the people who came all the way down and then had to turn around. I understand they waited a couple of hours and when they couldn’t get a hold of the operator they turned around.”
Pelletier said there are no plans to change their normal procedures.
“If this was something that happened more often, we would look at having an alternate means in place, but right now, this is after hours and weekends so we don’t have many people at work at that time,” he said.
“This was an isolated incident. Normally the system is reliable so we are not looking at doing anything different. The more notice they give us the more chance that someone will be there.”
Pelletier said he encourages groups to give the Municipality some notice for when they plan on coming through town as well.
“Normally if we have a big event and we know about it ahead of time, for example WAMBO, we will have operators there all the time,” he said. “We have the hours. In the future if there is similar types of events with boating, you know if some of the boating clubs are having an event, if they give us a call ahead of time we can make sure we are not at the mercy of the phone. It wouldn’t matter so much if the phone works or not.”
Dykhouse said he hopes the operation of the bridges doesn’t become an ongoing issue.
“It was our purpose to encourage first time visitors to visit Wallaceburg again in the future and perhaps WAMBO but if the manning of the bridges is dubious, I doubt that is going to happen.”
Here is some information from the Chatham-Kent website about Wallaceburg’s bridges:
Sydenham River Bridges:
Baseline Bridge, Lord Selkirk Bridge, Lou Stonehouse Bridge, Murray Bridge & Dundas Bridge in Wallaceburg
These swing bridges are opened on a call out basis by our Public Works Division. These bridges are looked after by the Road Supervisor, Wallaceburg at 519.627.6042 or 519.360.1998.
Hours of Operation:
Open seven days a week on the half hour from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. except between 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
After 3:30 p.m. Monday – Friday call 519.359.0935 to have the bridge opened.
On Saturday and Sunday call 519.359.0935 to have the bridge opened.
Do you have a question or concern? Call 519.360.1998 or email CKpw@chatham-kent.ca
– Sydenham Current File Photo
