Emergency planners brace for solar eclipse
Afternoon sky will go dark on April 8, 2024
Emergency personnel are preparing for an apocalyptic scene to unfold in Ohio next spring.
That’s because the afternoon sky will go dark for 3 minutes, 16 seconds on April 8, 2024, when the moon passes between the sun and Earth to create the first total solar eclipse in Ohio in 208 years.
An unprecedented number of visitors are expected to overwhelm North Central Ohio as they seek the best view of the heavenly event, according to Rebecca Owens, director of the Richland County Emergency Management Agency.
Those people will likely overload cell towers, roads and even sewage systems.
“We don’t even know if we’re going to have internet that day,” Owens said.
‘It was bumper-to-bumper ... It was shocking’
The centerline of the eclipse — the middle of the shadow’s path — will stretch from Texas to Maine.
The eclipse will enter western Ohio about 3:10 p.m. near the city of Greenville in Darke County, according to a NASA map.
The path of the eclipse will travel northeast, reaching Cleveland by 3:15 p.m., then Erie, Pennsylvania, by about 3:18 p.m.
The totality viewing area will be a 124mile wide strip angling from the southwest to northeast corners of the state.
The apex of the centerline will be in Forest, a village 35 miles west of Bucyrus in Wyandot County.
Visitors from around the world will want to be as close as possible to that point of maximum totality, Deloris Mlay, president of the Richland Astronomy Society, explained Wednesday to a group of more than 50 officials from Richland County.
She knows firsthand how large such a crowd will be. She learned on Aug. 21, 2017, when she visited Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to watch the total solar eclipse that stretched from Oregon to South Carolina.
There she found tens of thousands of spectators packed into parks and parking lots designed for only a few hundred people.
“They had live music,” Mlay said. “They had vendors. They had everything.”
Many of the people she met in Tennessee were umbraphiles, which are people who chase eclipses. The word literally means “shadow lover.”
When the eclipse was over, everyone packed up and tried to leave at once.
“It was bumper-to-bumper,” Mlay said. “It was shocking.”
It took her 11 hours to drive from Gatlinburg to Louisville, Kentucky, a journey that Google Maps projects should take only 4 hours, 46 minutes.
‘We’re all going to be overwhelmed’
Seven years later, those same travelers are planning to visit Ohio for the April 8, 2024, eclipse.
The state EMA predicts about 250,000 visitors will watch the eclipse in Richland County. Others will travel through to reach Crawford County, where the view will be slightly better.
“They will get up in the middle of the night and drive here,” Mlay said.
Many have already booked their hotel rooms or campsites for the weekend.
The county’s EMA director said the state government is running advertisements to convince travelers to stay in Ohio that entire weekend, or even longer.
People who don’t purchase lodging before options run out will still come to the area anyway, because watching the eclipse could be a once-in-a-lifetime event.
“We’re concerned about people just showing up somewhere and pitching a tent,” Owens said. “It might be a little touchy with some of this.”
If estimates are correct, the county’s population will triple the weekend of the event.
Keeping that many people safe is going to take a unified effort from all of the emergency personnel in the county, according to Jim Sweat, captain of the Richland County Sheriff’s Office.
His office is already planning exercises with surrounding police departments, firehouses and ambulance crews to prepare for the big day.
“We know we’re all going to be overwhelmed,” Sweat said.
Communication strong among county agencies
That flood of people is why the county’s EMA office has been planning for the eclipse since June of 2022.
Wednesday’s meeting was one of several planned where law enforcement, firefighters, school administrators, elected officials, pastors and others who work directly with the general population gather to discuss the status of their planning.
The hope is that every organization in the county has its own work groups that are planning ahead for the event.
Owens said that, as far as she can tell, Richland County is leading the state in preparedness.
“There’s not been a lot come down from the state,” Owens said.
Communication in the county, though, is strong and will only get stronger.
County Commissioner Tony Vero told the audience Wednesday that Richland County is launching a special solar eclipse menu on the county website Oct. 1.
The new menu will have safety information for visitors, a map with viewing locations around the area, facts about the eclipse and even a page with relevant links.
Eclipse traffic could create public health crisis
The overwhelming crowd could pose a public health crisis, according to Susan Mcfarren, a Richland Public Health nurse for emergency response and preparedness.
She’s been telling hospitals, nursing homes and other care facilities to stock up on medicine and supplies.
One of her fears is that emergency rooms will be crowded with people suffering from minor injuries, which will keep the most at-risk patients from receiving timely care.
Local health systems are still putting together a plan to determine whether first-aid stations will be helpful and warranted throughout the county.
‘Be prepared for delays wherever you go’
The timing of the eclipse — from 3:12 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. — will coincide with employee shift changes and school releases.
This has already caused most area schools to cancel classes for the day, according to Greg Nickoli, superintendent of Pioneer Career and Technology Center.
“Everyone is aware and everyone is planning,” Nickoli said.
Other options, like remote learning or special educational sessions, are still being discussed by the school districts that have not canceled.
Mandating or even recommending closures of any type isn’t something the county should do, Vero added.
The commissioner said he knows of schools and businesses that are planning to stay open the day of the eclipse, and he said he trusts that they understand their organization’s needs better than the government would.
Those who do stay open should remember that streets and roads throughout the county could easily be in total gridlock that afternoon, the EMA director said.
It’s possible that the hundreds of thousands of travelers could also deplete the region’s gasoline supply for several days after the eclipse.
Her hope is that schools and businesses consider keeping attendance levels to essentials only, and that events like weddings, proms and even funerals be delayed until at least a day after the eclipse.
“Keep these things in mind,” Owens said. “Be prepared for delays wherever you go.” ztuggle@gannett.com 419-564-3508