Plan for guardrail at pond reiterated

KEILA TORRES ktorres@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 03/03/2008 11:53:38 PM EST

BRIDGEPORT — City and state officials gathered Monday near the Beardsley Park site where four people drowned last July 4 to confirm previously announced plans to use state money to pay for safety measures.

The state Office of Policy and Management has allocated the city a $100,000 grant to install a guardrail along the Bunnell's Pond shoreline to prevent future tragedies.

On Monday, Mayor Bill Finch, joined by Senate President Pro Tempore Donald E. Williams, D-Brooklyn, and state Sen. Ed Gomes, D-Bridgeport, stood before reporters and photographers to repeat the announcement of the grant, first made public several months ago.

Officials said they hope the safety barriers will be installed before summer.

Finch also announced plans to improve the Fire Department's emergency training and equipment for underwater emergencies. The holiday drownings last year claimed the lives of Michelle McIntosh; her 2-year-old son, David Jr.; her 6-year-old nephew, Jaden Wilson; and 2-year-old Julia Boyd, the daughter of a family friend, when McIntosh's van rolled into the pond. The body of water has treacherous currents and its floor drops off sharply from the shoreline. Finch said some of the first rescuers on the scene were helpless last summer "only because they didn't have scuba gear."

Finch said that although the city's Police Department uses scuba gear to recover evidence, the squad is not trained to use the equipment for emergency responses.

"We're going to make it safer here and try to make sure the events of that day don't happen again," he said. Several relatives of the drowning victims attended the news conference to show support for the project. Williams said he hopes the new barriers would reduce the number of accidents at the park and make the recreation spot a safer place. Finch said the new barriers would be installed where wooden guardrails now end near the park entrance on Noble Avenue. He said the 2,160-foot guardrail would be installed along the sidewalk at the top of the hill, not along the water's edge. The parking lot near the park entrance, the site of a rundown concession stand, would not be repaved, as originally planned. The McIntosh van had been parked in the lot before it rolled down the hill and plunged into the pond.

The stand will be torn down and the small parking area, which has been blocked off since the drownings, will be removed and replaced with grass.

Finch said any remaining grant money would be used to plant a small garden at the site.