Meeting provides look at eclipse impact

Cheering crowds at the peak of totality marked the end of the 2017 solar eclipse, but not the end of all the preparation that went into making it a wonderful event in Hot Springs County for all the visitors.

A final eclipse “wrap up” meeting was held last Thursday to go over the final outcome of months of planning and preparation.

“We really had no accurate information on how many people were coming to Wyoming and certainly no information on which directions they were coming to get here,” Emergency Management Coordinator Bill Gordon said. “Now, we’re getting data from WYDOT and the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) on the numbers of cars and which roads they used to get here.”

According to WYDOT, the largest traffic impacts for the eclipse were seen in Goshen, Niobrara and Hot Springs Counties.

This may sound like it’s a little late, but it will help in the future when preparing for any type of large event. Knowing which roads visitors used to get here for the eclipse will give planners a better idea of which roads were used and use that information appropriately.

Captain Steve Sanders with the Wyoming Highway Patrol (WHP) expressed his appreciation for all the help, good planning and cooperation that went into the eclipse by the committee.

According to Sanders, things went very well. “We didn’t have a single fender bender, the traffic moved smoothly both in and out of Hot Springs County. It was slow at times, but it was smooth. I would call it very successful.”

The only downside Sanders could see was that parking for the eclipse was an issue.

“We could work on better markings to direct people off the road,” he said. “We’re thinking something like football field paint to mark where they are able to park along the roadside.”

Now that his department has access to traffic studies from the event, changes will be made for future incidents.

For example, traffic was severely underestimated in certain areas like the amount of traffic coming in from Washakie County. Now, with the studies, they can adjust their base plan of action to account for that.

Gordon said we really had no idea how the people were going to move.

“They just wanted to get to Wyoming to get under the path of totality,” he said. “We need to think about directing people to free or cheap parking to maybe get more of them off the sides of the roads.”

It was noted, especially around the Shoshoni area, a number of parking lots and open areas were roped off with signs charging to park there. Those places were virtually empty since visitors simply parked by the side of the road for free.

Things went well at the Chamber of Commerce, too, according to Chamber Director Meri Ann Rush.

“We started to see an increase in visitors on Wednesday,” she said. “In the summer, we usually have about 40 visitors per day on average. Our peak was on Monday when we had 135 people stop in.”

Rush commented that it was nice that we weren’t “shoulder to shoulder”, that people had room and that everything was clean. There had been some worry about trash, especially, that might get left behind.

“I think we did a very good job in planning for this, so we were ready for anything,” she said.

John Fish from Hot Springs State Park echoed Rush’s comments on everyone being kind, courteous, laid back and very clean.

“We had very, very little trash left behind in the park,” Fish said. “Considering it was an action packed weekend, we were very happy with the outcome.”

Fish indicated Saturday saw a huge impact on the park and it just got larger after that.

Sunday set record numbers of people at the bathhouse with over 500 soakers and swimmers. It was literally standing room only at the bathhouse but only one complaint was received, and that was from a local.

Traffic into the park increased 66.2 percent through the main entrance, 5.4 percent at the Arapahoe entrance, 22 percent from the entrance past the hospital and 6.3 percent at the railroad entrance further south.

There was also a steady stream of visitors to Legend Rock, but once again, Fish noted they were all kind and appreciative.

Mike Phillips with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) reported they had some folks coming in starting on Thursday, but their biggest days were Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

“We had a few issues with people building fires around Anchor Dam,” he said, “but they were handled easily. We made a lot of good educational contacts.”

Castle Gardens, he said, were overrun.

“It all worked out really well with the public lands,” he said. “People were friendly and we didn’t see any bad behavior.”

Assistant to the Mayor, Fred Crosby, said things went well as far as the town is concerned, too.

“Everything went fine,” he said. “We had water and we had sewer. It seemed like the floodgates kind of opened up on Saturday afternoon.”

Crosby said the dump station was the busiest on Monday and Tuesday, probably as people were leaving after the eclipse. The event and the influx of people did prompt the town to consider some permanent signage at the station.

Kim Black with the sheriff’s department was one of the volunteers for the hotline that was set up to try to keep some of the pressure of 9-1-1.

“We didn’t get as many calls as expected,” she said, “but we were prepared and were available to help. Everyone we talked to was awesome.”

Gordon thought the hotline went well, too, but thought perhaps people, in this age of smart phones, might simply want to go to their phones for information rather than calling a hotline. It could be an outdated concept, but still necessary.

One thought that was tossed around at the meeting was setting up something that would be smart phone friendly as part of a future plan. It was good, though, to be able to prove the county emergency tech equipment all works and works well.

The entire system can be up and running within an hour for emergencies if needed, so the eclipse was a good exercise for the future.

According to Zieb Stetler, they did have one repeater go down, but they were able to work around it and keep everything up and going.

Fire Chief Mark Collins was happy that it was a quiet time for emergency responders. There were no fire calls or any ambulance calls that were eclipse related the entirety of the event.

“I’m hearing from other chiefs across the state, too,” he said, “and they’re saying people were driving well everywhere, so no major accidents.”

Things went well for most businesses in town during the influx of visitors, too.

At least one restaurant ran out of food and at least one had to do some shopping at local grocery stores to keep going.

Black Bear Café had no such issues. As far as they were concerned everything went great and it was very exciting for them. They reported record numbers with three straight days of over 500 people at the restaurant.

With the exception of some stolen jewelry, things were great for Nature’s Corner, too. Sarah Farrell said they were super busy, but everybody was really nice.

It didn’t really go the way she expected though, with Monday being their big day. As soon as the eclipse was over, they had people waiting at the door to shop and could have possibly sold food well into the evening.

Ava’s Silver and Rock Shop was “jammed”.

“People had to wait outside,” Ava Cole said. “Our busiest days were two days before the eclipse and two days after, actually. Everybody was pretty patient while waiting in line.”

The only glitch she experienced was the credit card machine running slow periodically through the period, probably because the system was just not ready to handle that much traffic.

Owl Creek Graphics had some good sales numbers and a lot of foot traffic through Tuesday.

Dan Herdt said they had created a lot of t-shirts for different businesses and didn’t want to compete with them by selling them themselves, but their stock of Wyoming items sold very well.

“You can usually tell when a crowd comes in whether they’re a closed wallet crowd or an open wallet crowd,” he said. “This was definitely an open wallet crowd.”

It was kind of a mixed bag for Eagle RV.

While the people were great and didn’t leave behind a mess, two-thirds of the people registered for camping sites in the Hessenthaler field didn’t show up. Eagle RV tried to make contact with those who did not arrive, but figure those who didn’t come either found something further down the line or did not make the trip at all.

There was a complaint that came from some of the visitors on Sunday, however. People were very disappointed that more businesses did not open for shopping on Sunday when there were tour busses filled with tourists ready to spend their money.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience for everyone, locals and visitors alike.

Emergency Management and the other agencies can now take the information they’ve gathered and the lessons they’ve learned from the experience and work those things into the emergency plan for the county.

They know, now, what worked well and what needs adjustment so we can be even better prepared in the future.