HOOD CANAL — The two four-day closures of the Hood Canal Bridge — one over the coming weekend and one during the week of Aug. 21-27, both lasting 80 hours — will require additional planning by anyone who regularly travels to the Seattle area.
But the short-term closures, which will act as test runs for a longer eight-week closure tentatively scheduled for 2008 or 2009, shouldn’t cause large-scale disruptions for medical services in Clallam and Jefferson counties.
Pam Miller, Olympic Medical Center’s director of nursing, said the hospital has been anticipating the bridge closures for some time.
“It began a couple of years ago in preparation for the big closure, the eight-week one,” she said.
Kathi Presley, the hospital’s director of materials management, said vendors who usually deliver the hospital’s food and oxygen supplies on Mondays have agreed to drive around Hood Canal during the bridge closures.
The deliveries will arrive on the normal day and the hospital will schedule its receiving personnel to accept them later in the day than usual, Presley said.
“They are going to go the extra mile for us,” Presley said.
“It’s a reflection of the relationships we’ve built with our vendors.”