Post-eclipse report: Minimal impact, mass gathering changes

The Burnet County Sheriff’s Office will impose curfews and volume restrictions on future mass gatherings in the aftermath of the Texas Eclipse Festival at Reveille Peak Ranch in early April. Nearby residents complained of all-night music on four of the festival’s five days.

“We prepared for music, but we didn’t prepare for nonstop thumping music,” said BCSO Chief Deputy Alan Trevino during an after-action report on Tuesday, April 23, at the Burnet Chamber of Commerce’s monthly Coffee and Conversation meetup.

The Sheriff’s Office approves mass gathering permits in the county, and Trevino and other officials spent months negotiating with Texas Eclipse Festival promoters to make sure the 33,000-person event went as smoothly as possible. The festival ended early due to predicted storms the day after the April 8 eclipse.

“We had a once-in-a-lifetime event, the eclipse, and we had the largest event at a private facility—I would think ever—in Burnet County going on at the same time,” Trevino said. 

Many Burnet County businesses lost money on what turned out to be a slow weekend prior to the eclipse. The county didn’t see the massive influx of visitors it expected and planned for with the area being in the path of totality.

In the lead-up to the celestial event, Burnet County officials told residents and businesses to prepare for swarms of tourists, including stocking up on supplies and staying open on the days surrounding the eclipse.

Amber Cardenas, who owns Bill’s Burgers in Burnet with husband Max, spoke during the chamber event and offered her point of view as a business owner.

“I feel like it’s worth mentioning that it was difficult the weekend of the eclipse,” she said. “We were down about 20 percent in business that weekend. I know it was even harder for those who were there just for that event. I don’t want to put that in a negative context because we are also very, very grateful for all of the work that everybody has done. We see it as an overall great experience, but it should be noted that it was pretty rough for the loss of income that was expected.”

Burnet County Tourism Director Blair Manning acknowledged Cardenas’ point.

“I agree,” Manning said. “I appreciate you not saying it in a negative way. The day after the eclipse, the last thing I wanted to do was come in front of people like you who own small businesses.”

Cardenas reiterated her belief that the eclipse’s impacts were good overall.

“You can always make more money, but you can’t take back somebody getting hurt or something terribly going wrong,” she said. “In the long run, we appreciate the planning more than the loss of income from one weekend.”

Manning offered a few solid statistics to paint a picture of eclipse tourism:

• Over 50,000 pairs of eclipse glasses were distributed by the county and cities within it, enough to ensure every resident could get a pair.
• The county saw a 35 percent increase in typical visitation from April 4-9.
• Nearly 80,000 visitors came to Burnet County on April 8, the day of the eclipse.
• Visitors came from all 50 states and at least 30 countries.

“Even though it wasn’t the huge mass of visitors that we were talking about, we did still have a pretty significant uptick,” Manning said. “But we would rather be prepared than not be prepared.”

Manning, the Burnet County Sheriff’s Office, and the Burnet County Office of Emergency Management spent more than a year planning for the eclipse and informing residents, business owners, and visitors about the potential impacts. 

The county prepared for heavy traffic and a ton of tourists, even declaring a temporary state of emergency on the days surrounding the eclipse. Much of the preparation was based on reports from small towns in the northwestern United States of tens of thousands of visitors during the 2017 total solar eclipse. That region experienced extreme traffic delays and suffered shortages of essential supplies like food and fuel.

Manning attributed the less-than-expected impacts of the April 8 eclipse to the fact that residents here were more prepared than those in the path of the 2017 eclipse.

Burnet County Emergency Management Coordinator Derek Marchio agreed, adding that the cloudy weather forecast for the county likely scared off many of the day-trippers who originally planned to come.

“We lucked out with the weather forecast,” Marchio said. “In my whole entire life, I’ve never seen a weather forecast hold up for two weeks. The forecast for clouds started two weeks prior to this event, and it held through solid all the way up until the day of.”

The Sheriff’s Office logged about 300-350 hours of overtime on the days surrounding the eclipse, Trevino said.

“We planned as well as we could,” he said. “We planned as much as we could for every scenario that we could. While we wanted to have a big participation from out of county, 80,000 (visitors) is still a really good number.”

dakota@thepicayune.com