Aroostook County emergency planning has kicked into high gear with just over two months until 40,000 or more eclipse chasers are predicted to descend upon the area.
As County emergency planners try to think of all the possibilities, the list of contingencies grows beyond traffic and medical preparation to things like weather-related incidents, above average water usage and boosting cell phone capacity, said Darren Woods, director of Aroostook County Emergency Management Services.
On Friday, Woods met with commanders of the state police, county sheriff’s personnel, game wardens and park rangers to talk about how they could coordinate, assess and help communities deal with the effects of overcrowding for the April 8 eclipse.
“Things are really starting to pick up now,” Woods said. “We’ve met with cell phone companies, other counties to compare notes and help each other. We’ve been talking more with hospitals and the Department of Transportation just to make sure everybody’s on board.”
From past eclipse experiences in other states, traffic, internet connections and porta potties are among the biggest problems. And post-eclipse reports indicated those were issues states and counties could have handled better.
Fourteen states were in the eclipse path of totality — the 100 or so mile wide path where viewers can see the full eclipse — for the 2017 total solar eclipse.
The event stopped traffic for hours in many states. South Carolina University researchers later compared traffic patterns, examining the impacts of traffic before, during and after the eclipse. And while most states prepared well in advance, it was still hard to predict the number of visitors and their arrival and departure patterns.
About 21 million people traveled to another city to view the eclipse, 133 million viewed from home, and 62 million watched it online, according to the study.
On eclipse day, Tennessee traffic was backed up 34 miles along I-75 between Niota and the I-40 interchange at Farragut; in Wyoming, the state’s population of 585,000 doubled and traffic increased 68 percent; traffic on several Montana highways was delayed an hour or more; and in Oregon, Madras Municipal Airport had more than 400 personal planes queued waiting to leave immediately after the eclipse.
Woods was working during the famed Limestone Phish concerts that brought thousands to Aroostook County and he said they can garner some insights from those events. But this is going to be a bit different, he said.
“The time of year is different, the crowd is different and we don’t have a large promoter footing the bill for all this,” Woods said. “I wish we had a large promoter who was paying to bring in resources. We don’t have that and staffing is a big concern.”
Last year Woods sent a questionnaire to County cities and towns to try and get an idea of what they are planning and how many visitors they estimate. And he just recently resent it for additional information and a reminder of things municipalities need to consider when planning for the eclipse.
“This would help me develop a regional plan and help them to remember important things beyond the tourism aspect,” he said. “On a regional level we’ve gotten relatively little information from the communities so far but it is starting to come in now.”
Woods urges communities to consider coordinating with their neighbors on traffic, providing maps to visitors with traffic patterns, cell phone access, aircraft traffic, snowmobile traffic, public safety, increased staffing, mutual aid companies, gasoline availability, convenience store capabilities and port-a-potties.
In Houlton, the last town in the United States in the path of totality, planners have developed an elaborate bus shuttle route and maps to help people travel without vehicles. The Houlton School District is lending its buses for the event.
Tim DeLuca, Houlton’s chief of police and interim town manager, did not share any details about police planning but said that emergency services planning has been underway and he has been working with law enforcement. He said he could not release any other information now, but indicated that officials are preparing public service announcements.
The Maine State Police are working closely with local and state partners, preparing for any potential increase in traffic and large gatherings that the eclipse may bring, spokesperson Shannon Moss said.
Moss said troopers are trained in the nationally recognized traffic incident management system and they know how to safely and quickly clear accidents so vehicle flow can resume and secondary crashes can be avoided.
“We are making preparations to ensure the safety of the motoring public, including deploying additional troopers as needed,” Moss said. “We also remind the public to watch the eclipse from designated viewing areas and to avoid stopping on controlled access highways unless there is an emergency. “
Houlton Regional Hospital regularly trains, drills and plans for mass casualties, said chief operating officer Gina Brown.
The training ranges from car accidents to fires to chemical spills, she said.
And they regularly work with Woods and Aroostook County Emergency Management for simulation drills.
“We have to always be ready,” Brown said.
Woods said that most people will try to access the internet with their cell phones and they are concerned if the County’s cell phone network can handle that much traffic so they have been talking with cell phone service providers.
“There are mobile units, a truck that is like a pop-up mobile cell tower that can increase capacity,” he said. “We talked about the possibility of bringing one or two of those into the county to boost access.”
Weather is another big problem, Woods said.
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“Historically there’s a greater than 60 percent chance that we’re going to have cloudy weather on that day and we worry about snow and traffic going off the pavement,” he said.
At this point the emergency planners are trying to gather as much information as they can to find out what towns are planning to do and getting an estimate about how many people will visit.
But one of the hardest things to pinpoint is the total number of visitors predicted and Woods said the numbers right now are all over the place, running from 10,000 to 40,000.
“We are getting prepared for the worst and the bigger numbers,” he said. “And if it doesn’t materialize, it ends up being a good training event.”
