BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) -A recent video has highlighted significant issues faced by Bryan’s first responders due to road medians, sparking a debate on their impact on emergency response times. The video, taken on Texas Avenue, shows a Bryan Fire Department truck forced to make a U-turn, taking over three minutes to reach a crash scene. Blocked by traffic
with nowhere to go, first responders had to abandon their vehicle and run to the accident.
The issue was recently raised by concerned community member Karen Hall during a Bryan City Council meeting.
“My goal here is to show you a couple of reasons that you need to know to consider removing some of those medians,” Hall said. “The stated reason for putting in them is public
safety, and that is a noble purpose, but in some cases, it does lead to unsafe conditions.”
Fire Chief Richard Giusti discussed these challenges with News 3′s Donnie Tuggle, saying these situations are not uncommon.
“It is typical during some of our responses, especially when we have heavy traffic or when we have accidents like that. The
streets, when you have the medians there, you know, they cause restrictions for us ‘cause we can’t cross over ‘em, especially with our larger apparatus,” Giusti explained. “When that happens, there’s nowhere for the public to pull over to. And because of that, it causes traffic jams, and sometimes you have to go a lot further up to turn around and then to get back to the accident that you really want to go to.”
Denise Fries, a local
resident who witnessed the incident, described the scene as shocking.
“I was actually horrified to see how difficult it was for that firetruck to make a turn safely and then very concerned for the first responders who showed up and had to abandon their vehicle in the middle of the road and run to the scene of the accident. So I would say it was much worse than I thought,” Fries said. “What I was thinking it was gonna be pretty bad. So
it was worse than I thought it would be because I never really dreamed that it would be that difficult for our first responders to be even close to the scene of an accident.”
Denise Fries(KBTX)
Hall described the scenario vividly during her speech to city leaders.
“The fire truck couldn’t access the accident because of the median. It had to go all the way down to Rosemary to make a U-turn, which took several attempts. Meanwhile, traffic from University was stacking up, making it
even harder for the responders to reach the scene,” Hall explained.
Fries echoed the same sentiments.
“The cars were impeding their ability to get there, they abandoned their firetruck and had to just go on foot to the scene of the accident. That doesn’t seem safe for our first responders. They’re already putting their lives in jeopardy for us. Should we allow medians to
cause it to be where a firefighter or an EMS is hit by a car trying to get to somebody who needs them? That doesn’t seem fair to them,” said Fries.
Experts say whether medians should be removed depends on various factors, including accident data. Chief Giusti says that while medians can be inconvenient, they also serve an important purpose.
“I think you have to take a look at
what the medians are for. Medians are, you know, a double-edged sword, basically, to where they prevent people from going over ‘em to have head-on collisions, but they also slow down emergency response. I mean, so there’s a benefit to ‘em to making sure that we’re safe on the roads and not having catastrophic accidents. But on the other side of that, there’s a cost to that, and the cost is delaying emergency response, you know, sometimes by minutes,” said Chief Giusti.
Bryan Fire Chief Richard Giusti(KBTX)
Fries,
involved in a local organization named the BCS Median Project, is advocating for the reassessment of median placement and stressed the urgency of addressing these delays.
“I got involved with the median’s organization because I’m actually a mother and a wife and a grandmother, and I’m a very caring person, and I’m very frightened for how long it takes for first responders to get to scenes of accidents. Many, many things, such as a
heart attack, a near drowning, or choking, seconds count, not just minutes. And when first responders cannot get to the scene of an incident because of the medians, something needs to be done. We need to be in a situation where we use some common sense logic to try to make it be where medians are removed in certain sections of the road so that the first responders can get to where they need to go as quickly as they used to be able to go,” Fries added.
The video has prompted calls for a detailed review of the medians’ impact on both traffic safety and emergency response times. Chief Giusti emphasized the importance of data-driven decisions.
“When you take a look at those different things, you know, with response times, you know, it’s not minutes, it’s seconds that count during heart attacks, strokes, different types of injuries, and people can’t be waiting on
that. And that’s not just going to our victims to keep ‘em alive; that’s coming back and getting ‘em to the hospital as well. And so, you know, I’m hoping that the data was taken a look at prior to implementing the medians so that, you know, a good decision was made,” said Giusti.
