Team effort, planning, led to smooth eclipse weekend

Mayor Jerry Jackson told the audience at the City Council Committee meeting Thursday night that there had been no problems during the eclipse. Then, for emphasis, he repeated, “No problems at all.”

Fire Chief Marc Lowery said, “On Monday morning, the traffic was heavily congested, and we didn’t have a lot of calls. Our call volume was a lot lower than expected. No bad accidents were reported during that time frame.”

Police Chief Chris Graddy said, “Obviously, we saw an influx of traffic Monday morning and many out-of-state plates. It went smoothly Monday morning. We didn’t have to do anything extra. The traffic lights did their job and pushed traffic through.”

“Monday afternoon, it was the same way. Extremely heavy traffic but no accidents. It was remarkable for the amount of traffic we had come through,” Lowery said. “The fire department did get a call during the eclipse. It sounded bad. A tenant had called in and thought they had a fire in the wall. Luckily, we could get there by back streets, so we didn’t have to fight traffic. Thankfully, it turned out that a microwave had shorted out. It was a quick work, there.”

“By noon, there was no traffic,” Graddy said. “Everyone had gotten to where they were going. But as soon as the eclipse was over, everybody started leaving. We had officers work the lights at Walmart and Hester Drive. Then we had two more officers working the thousands of cars off Airport Road. I’ve never seen that many cars in my life. We would wait until Airport Road backed up to Hester and Fire Station 3, and then we would stop southbound traffic, continue northbound traffic in the outside lane, and block the inside lane to get people off of Airport Road. We did that from about 2:30 p.m. until 5:30 or 6 p.m.”

Later in the afternoon, the fire department was needed to assist the Newton County Sheriff’s Department with a ropes/hike-in rescue.

Lowery said, “A lady had hiked to a location to watch the eclipse. She went into seizures on the bluff. She didn’t fall. But she couldn’t come out of her seizures long enough to get herself out. So we were glad to assist.”

“I think all the planning helped,” Lowery said. “We were heavily prepared and kept extra crews on for three days. The best situation was probably the Newton County call. Because we had extra people, we could send to assist them and still have more than enough to cover the city.”

Graddy said, “We noticed the traffic was not backing up badly after 6 p.m. So we let the lights get them through. We noticed some traffic Tuesday morning, but the lights were able to take care of it.”

The chiefs reported no major crashes and agreed it was a well-planned team effort by the police, fire departments, and public works.

“It was a team effort,” Graddy and Lowery both agreed.