Repairs to the swinging bridge at Riverfront Park are expected to begin during the week of April 4.  Work is expected to be completed in early June. Inland Construction, Inc. will be the contractor performing this work for the City of Kingsport.

The bridge will remain closed to the public during construction and reopen once the repairs are completed.

The swinging bridge across the South Fork of the Holston River was built in the 1970s, connecting Riverfront Park to Domtar Park. Kingsport closed the bridge in May 2021 after city maintenance crews discovered damage in some of the wooden substructure.

Kingsport bid the project last summer, but only one bid was submitted and it came in higher than expected. A second bid process took place last fall with Inland Construction submitting the low bid of $188,900 for the project.

City Engineer Hank Clabaugh said Inland will replace all of the bridge’s existing wooden joists with new ones, while the existing chain-linked fencing and tension wire along the sides will be replaced with new, vinyl-coated green fencing.

The majority of the damage is to the wooden substructure of the bridge – the wood that’s underneath the planks/decking that people walk on. It’s deteriorated and needs to be replaced.

“When you have wood over water, it tends to degrade faster than in normal environments,” Clabaugh said. “The last time it was fixed, we put new joists beside the old ones, but now there’s not enough room to handle the additional weight so we’re going to take out the old ones and put in new ones.”

Not everything is being replaced though. The existing composite deck boards (walking surface) will be kept, as will the structural steel cables, Clabaugh added.

The existing steel towers, cables, and other structural steel components are in good condition, but will be repainted during this project.

Telephone-based, mass notification systems are used by thousands of police and fire departments across the United States to warn citizens about local emergencies, hazards and other threats.

After months of research, the City of Kingsport is announcing the selection of Hyper-Reach as the city’s emergency notification provider. Hyper-Reach is a state of the art mass emergency notification system designed specifically for public safety.

“Our job is to protect the citizens of Kingsport as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible,” said Lt Kevin Hite, executive director of Kingsport 911. “We reviewed all the major vendors for emergency notification services and Hyper-Reach gave us everything we needed at just the right price.”

Kingsport, its public works department and Sullivan County 911 will all be using the Hyper-Reach system. Kingsport employees will be training on the new system in April and Hite said he expects to have the service fully operational in Kingsport later this spring.

The new emergency alert system will provide rapid notification of hazardous and urgent situations using a mix of telephone calls, text and email messages, and even TTY/TDD service for the hearing impaired.

The system sends thousands of these messages to geographically targeted households in seconds, and can simultaneously deliver them to an even broader audience via social media, as well as sending broadcast messages to most current mobile telephones (made since 2011) in an affected area by providing access to FEMA’s Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system. 

Kingsport plans to use the service primarily for alerts about weather and environmental hazards, criminal activity and missing persons. Landline phones are automatically enrolled for Community alerts, but Weather alerts to landline phones and Community and Weather alerts to VoIP phones, mobile phones, and email addresses are only included when people enroll.

Residents and people who work in Kingsport are encouraged to enroll now either by calling or texting “Alert” to (423) 390-0272 or by going to the website http://hyper-reach.com/tnsullivansignup.html. Citizens can get emergency alerts via their Alexa-enabled smart speakers just by saying “Alexa, enable Hyper-Reach” and following the Alexa-provided instructions.

Citizens can also download the Hyper-Reach Anywhere app on their smartphone. Hyper-Reach Anywhere is a free smartphone app that allows individual citizens to manage and monitor the alerts they receive, both for their home and office addresses and for other addresses they care about such as those of elderly relatives or friends.

“We’re honored to have been selected by Kingsport ECD and Sullivan County to provide their emergency alerts,” said Sam Asher, President of Hyper-Reach. “It’s gratifying to be part of an effort to save lives and protect property and we take that responsibility very seriously.”