Local

Bridge closure to cost jobs, send traffic on lengthy detour

CHESTER COUNTY, S.C. — The signs are in place to alert drivers about a major bridge closure that will reroute thousands of people beginning Monday.

South Carolina Department of Transportation officials said more than 5,000 vehicles travel the Highway 9 bridge every day over the Broad River between Chester and Union counties.

About 1,000 of them are 18-wheelers and large trucks.

Bill Shilling drives one of those trucks.

"This is crazy. It's crazy," he said. "It's not like they didn't know all this about the bridge before now."

For the next month, Shilling will join the rest of the traffic being detoured 35 miles out of the way to get around the closure.

A rusted-out support system is forcing the immediate repairs.

SCDOT officials told Channel 9 Thursday that new girders put in place a decade ago are holding, but the original supports are rusted, and need reinforcement. The issue was discovered during a routine inspection.

"I live on that side of the river and all my business comes out of Chester County," Shilling said.

Gus Poulos operates a convenience store just inside Chester County at the bridge.  

He has no choice but to close his business.

"I can't stay open. We'll lose so much money. We'll be on a dead-end street by next week," Poulos said.

Last fall, firefighters, the Environmental Protection Agency and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control spent months trying to contain a landfill fire next door to the store.  

Smoke often filtered into the restaurant but Poulos managed to stay open but the bridge closure will keep all his customers away.  

He's asked his six workers to apply for unemployment on Monday.

He plans to reopen when the bridge does.

"This is the first time in 24 years the store closed," he said.

Officials at Chester County Emergency Management also have concerns about what the closure will mean.

Ed Darby said storage tanks to refill pumper trucks during a fire are on the opposite side of the Broad River on the Lockhart side.  

That means in a major fire, pumper trucks must be called in from other further stations to make sure there's enough water.

"That's a concern to us.  A major fire, and water supply," Darby said.

He's been in contact with local volunteer stations to make sure they know what to expect.

The detour set in place by SCDOT runs from Highway 9 onto Highway 49 to York County, over on Highway 211, and back down to Highway 105 into Lockhart.  That is 35 miles and took a Channel 9 crew 42 minutes to drive on Thursday afternoon.


SCDOT officials said the project must meet its Aug. 14 deadline because school begins and some buses use the Broad River Bridge on school routes.

Once temporary repairs are finished, a new bridge over the river is scheduled to begin construction in November.  It will be a two-to-three year project and the old bridge will remain open while it's built.