Access.
For different reasons and on completely separate levels, access is the primary issue when it comes to a couple of closures in the city of Wheeling.
More than 2,000 residents on Wheeling Island have been without the option of traveling over the historic Suspension Bridge since after the state Transportation Secretary Byrd White issued the order in late September. What was weird at the time was the span had been re-opened for three weeks following the installation of hard barriers and after repairs to damage caused by a packed-full motor coach that attempted to cross it in late June.
Secretary Byrd offered only a two-day notice. And then BAM!
The same suddenness took place when Aletco Corp. offered more than 900 employees at Ohio Valley Medical Center not even two days before shutting down the health care facility in Center Wheeling. While the medical patients were absorbed at other facilities, access to mental health help has not been nearly as readily available as it was once was in the city of Wheeling.
And people need the help they need.
She took video and photos, and she posted what she posted on Facebook because she feared the inevitable.
The efforts of Kim Adams, one of our journalists here at LEDE News, were with intentions to remind, maybe even to stop, overweight violators from crossing the historic span because it had been closed to vehicles for a month while work was performed. But some on social media, and even a few Wheeling Island residents, took exception to the pics and live shots and quickly labeled her with her newest nickname, “Bridge Bitch.”
Although indecent, those critics simply wished for the issue to be forgotten again as the Wheeling Suspension has been by state officials for many years. A $10 million rehabilitation project was announced seven years ago, but it has been delayed ever since. The span, opened in the 1850s, is a national landmark and an American monument for its role in the development of the West.
The country’s first highway, National Pike or U.S. 40, guided travelers to Wheeling, and the demand to continue west spirited the effort. Kim, though, adopted a protection mode, and she explains why.
Along with OVMC, Hillcrest and the Robert C. Byrd Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health Center were shuttered shamelessly, and 13-year-employee Martha Connors has referred to the situation as a health care crisis since creating the SaveHillcrest/OVMC/EORH Facebook page.
She’s been correct the entire time, too. Deputies of the sheriff’s office now escort patients for hours instead of minutes to get those folks to the help they need; doctors, nurses, techs, and the rest of the employees scrambled to find employment, and the staffs at Wheeling Hospital and WVU Medicine Reynolds Memorial Hospital have been inundated with the ill since early September.
That crisis grew larger, too, in early October when Alecto proceeded to close East Ohio Regional Hospital in Martins Ferry, displacing not only the employees but more than 20 continuous care patients, too.
A crisis indeed.
