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After Christmas Stroll power outage, stakeholders press for stronger event emergency plans
Summary
Event organizers and town staff reviewed December’s Christmas Stroll, citing a major downtown power outage that disrupted businesses and communications and prompting calls for an after-action review, clearer staging with National Grid and Steamship Authority, and improved crowd management.
Peter Burke, a chamber representative who briefed the Visitor Services Advisory Committee, said the town’s December Christmas Stroll “by a lot of metrics was a success” but that a downtown power outage exposed gaps in emergency response and communications. “We saw upwards of 18,000 people that weekend on our cell phone tracking,” Burke said, adding that Main Street likely saw “5 to 6,000 people” at peak periods.
The outage affected businesses, hotels and public safety operations and limited cellphone service for some attendees, Burke and other participants said. Burke described difficulties coordinating National Grid equipment delivery to the island and said Steamship Authority scheduling constraints prevented an earlier equipment ferry run. “There was a lot of reason that the public had to be a little bit…perturbed,” he said.
Committee members and town staff highlighted three immediate concerns: (1)…
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