08-04-2025
Reflecting on the Total Solar Eclipse one year later
AVON LAKE, Ohio (WJW) — One year ago, a Total Solar Eclipse passed directly through areas of Northeast Ohio giving residents here and visitors a spectacle which, for many, will be a once in a lifetime event.
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That event was preceded here by planning that started in the spring of 2021, with the expectation of drawing as many as one million people to the state of Ohio from around the world, tens of thousands of them converging on Lorain County.
Among the concerns were the problems associated with the mass exodus of people leaving the area all at the same time following the eclipse.
The planning was modeled after experiences in Tennessee and Kentucky following a previous eclipse
With the eclipse here happening about 3:00 in the afternoon, the concerns included having school children trapped on buses in traffic for hours, the ability of emergency services to navigate streets if traffic became backed up, and what might happen if there was a fender bender, a breakdown or a medical emergency in traffic.
Other contingencies included preparing for the unlikely event of a bad actor creating casualties in a crowd and what might happen if gas stations were to run out of gas.
'There was a lot of meetings, we got a lot of people together that normally don't sit in the same room,' said Lorain County Emergency Management Agency Director Dave Freeman.
'It was a huge team effort and everyone in the communities came together fantastically, I mean there were people meeting in these rooms that had never talked to each other. So I think the biggest thing that came out of this was that we developed those relationships and those carry over to everything else that we do,' said Freeman.
The agency staged emergency services at various locations to help expedite their response in the case of an emergency. Freeman says he was able to view traffic and crowds at different events in real time using drones.
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But the traffic congestion never materialized. The crowds were not as large as expected
Reflecting back on the event one year later, Freeman believes part of the reason the crowds were smaller than anticipated was that the day started off cloudy
While the weather here ended up being perfect in time for the eclipse that afternoon, it did not start out that way so a number of hotel reservations across the area were cancelled the day before.
'So people, I think what they were doing was booking probably five or six locations with the expectation that we are going to go to a place that is going to be the best weather,' said Freeman.
Another thing that might have helped was that there were so many events spread out across the region.
'Crusher stadium had an event, the Science Center had something, the Guardians had something, all the Metroparks both in Lorain, Cuyahoga, there were events everywhere,' said Dr. Jack Dibee, Assistant Superintendent of Avon Lake Schools who participated on the planning committee beginning three years before the eclipse.
While the high school stadium did host a public event, school was not in session that day to help relieve any traffic problems.
But Freeman also believes a part of what went right is that many local residents actually followed his advice and stayed at home, watching the eclipse from the comfort of their own back yards.
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'Failing to plan is planning to fail. I would much rather be over-prepared, if there is such a thing, than to be underprepared and that's the question I had. Do you think you over-prepared? I said you are going to have to define that for me, what does overprepared means? It didn't happen. That doesn't mean you were over-prepared, that means you were prepared appropriately,' said Freeman.
Economically communities invested tens of thousands in events and preparation. In Cuyahoga and Lorain Counties it was all hands-on deck for sheriff's offices. Numerous law enforcement agencies were staged to help direct traffic. Communities invested in their eclipse events.
Some of those costs were reimbursed by the state. But not all.
'They were allowed to report overtime money, money they spent on traffic control devices, tent rentals, generators, stuff like that and I think the biggest one that I probably had come in was around $50,000 or so,' said Freeman
'Not insignificant but not huge and they were reimbursed for a portion of that, not the entire thing. There was a significant cost. Now is that reciprocated by the visitors coming in? I don't have a good answer for you. I don't know. But yeah it cost some money, but the cost of being unprepared is worse,' he added.
By one estimate, those who did come to the area for the eclipse spent as much as $24 million dollars here during their stay.
'What it ended up being was a really great plan, a really great exercise without the trouble that would have come if we had the influx that we initially expected,' said Freeman.
'It absolutely was once in a lifetime and for those of us old enough to have at least lived through some partial eclipses and see that to see what we saw one year ago today was amazing,' said Dibee.
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'I was just blown away it leaves you speechless when you look at that and think of everything that lined up for an eclipse to happen,'
He hopes those planning for the next total eclipse here will learn from the lessons of this one.
That will happen in 2099.
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