Bedell Bridge Down

By Bernie Marvin

The Bedell Bridge was blown into the Connecticut River nearly 47 years ago on September 14, 1979.

Many lucky people were on the bridge that night, and except for one, all ran to safety. It was quite a night for area first responders when the alarm went out that the nearly new Bedell Bridge, an entirely wooden covered bridge, had been destroyed in a sudden windstorm that raced up the river and hit the bridge with a fast-moving ton of force.

It picked the bridge up off its concrete abutment in the center and at each end and dropped the entire span into the Connecticut River. The wild weather action lasted about 10 seconds. By the time the wind hit the bridge and the people were running away from the falling structure, many tons of debris, including boards and timbers, were left bobbing in the rough, white-capped river, battered by the wind, rain, thunder, and lightning.

For people to be on the newly constructed bridge that had been in place since July 4, three months earlier, it was a scary night, indeed. The people were there as part of a wedding rehearsal party for the intended bride and groom, Richard Patton and Winifred Welch.

They had planned for their wedding to take place in the center of the long bridge span, and when the bridge crashed into the water below, Richard and Winifred were lucky to flee as they felt the bridge deck roll and shake. Ellen was trapped by fallen lumber at a point about 20 feet from the riverbank down towards the river.

 My late friend Nancy Pompian was familiar with the destruction of the new Bedell Bridge and wrote an informative, complete history of the Bedell Bridge's demise. It appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of Hanover Image Magazine.

Many fire departments and medical units responded to the downed bridge site on the night of September 14, 1979. Two of the women on the bridge at the time it collapsed were extricated; one of them, Ellen Wheelock, who was trapped inside the collapsed structure, was saved by the first responders who took courageous chances in making the rescue.

There was a distinct and present fear that the area of the bridge containing the young woman would slide into the river and put her and her rescuers in peril of drowning in the roiling, stormy waters of the Connecticut River that night.

Members of the Haverhill Corner Fire Department responded quickly to the site, and with the assistance of people like Dr. David Frechette, Mike Lavoie, Joe Provencal, Norm Demers, George and Tony Smith, Richard Morris, and dozens of other first responders, who did everything they could to help with the rescue, which included setting up lights and cutting away trees.

The rescue came when firefighters roped up Mike Lavoie, who used a chainsaw while in a precarious cutting position on a large portion of the bridge that had been flattened, with one end deep in the river and the other at the bridge abutment and on the riverbank.

Lavoie carefully engineered the cut, finally removing enough wood to allow rescuers to pull Ellen from the wreckage and pass her up to Dr. Frechette. She was quickly examined, rushed to a waiting ambulance, and taken to Cottage Hospital for treatment.

Little did personnel know that on that sunny day during the previous July celebration of the opening of the new Bedell Bridge, less than 60 days later the bridge would be destroyed and lying deep in the Connecticut River.

There was talk of restoring the bridge, and Steve Wellington said he would consider launching another capital campaign to raise enough money to rebuild it in the future. As he thought about it, he later told me that it probably would not be a good idea to fire up the Bedell Bridge restoration fund effort again. 

He and I talked about it. We had returned to the site a couple of days after the disaster. He was saddened by the loss of the bridge but decided to move forward after looking around and seeing the destruction it caused. He said the lone stone abutment remaining in the middle of the river would have to serve as a reminder that, for a brief time, a beautifully restored Bedell Bridge once stood atop that abutment.