Following two incidents on Halloween in 2017, a group of residents in the Eastgate II subdivision decided to make plans for a safer holiday this year.
Trick-or-treating will only be allowed in the subdivision from 5-7:45 p.m. on Oct. 31, and extra measures will be taken to ensure people are parking in designated areas and not impeding traffic flow.
According to resident Chuck Dudley, the subdivision sees roughly 750-1,500 people on Halloween night from all over Garland County and as far away as Mount Ida and Malvern. Because of this influx of people, traffic often becomes hazardous in the neighborhood.
"Eastgate II is a place where everybody seems to want to come for Halloween. We are a nice neighborhood and we understand why they come," he said. "We have people walking up and down all of our streets and I've lived there 24 years, and we're just real lucky that we didn't have an incident like Quail Ridge had a couple years ago. I was just afraid (last year) someone was going to get run over."
In 2017, Dudley said a large fight broke out in a few residents' yards that resulted in "four or five police cars" arriving at the scene. The second incident was a fire on one of the neighborhood's hill roads and the Hot Springs Fire Department had difficulty maneuvering the traffic to respond to that emergency.
"If you have any emergencies in Eastgate II on Halloween, you can't get out," he said. "That's not a good thing. There's only one way in; there's not another way out. We're, for the most part, landlocked, and what's been happening is a lot of times people will get on social media and say 'Where's the best place to go?' 'Well, go over to Eastgate II.' I think we had more people last year than we've ever had and with the problems, we just can't do it anymore."
After these incidents, Dudley said a group of neighbors formed a Facebook group to discuss the problem and soon approached the Hot Springs Police Department with their concerns. Dudley said the police department was unable to provide off-duty officers, but off-duty deputies from the Garland County Sheriff's Department will be on hand at a few points throughout the neighborhood that night.
"The city has also been very helpful in this," he said. "Denny McFate's public works office is going to have orange and white either barrels or barricades on the outbound side of the street all the way down to the stop sign and in the cul-de-sacs. What that does is it only lets you park on one side of the street and it gives people two lanes of traffic because what we had before was two lanes parked and people cutting in and out."
Signs are currently posted in the neighborhood outlining the times for trick-or-treating and about the parking areas, he said. Dudley said he also understands that the city is looking into potentially putting permanent "no parking" signs up on Lakeside Road.
"It's illegal to park on Lakeside Road, but there's always been a lot of parking on Lakeside Road at Halloween," he said. "There will be signs that say no parking and if it gets bad, someone will call the police and have that enforced. That's not safe, either."
While Christmas also creates a lot of traffic in the neighborhood, Dudley said that holiday doesn't see any foot traffic or parking, and issues have been minimal during that time. At Halloween, he said the danger comes with children and families out walking and darting between cars.
"We want people to know that they're welcome at Eastgate II, but we have rules now," Dudley said. "The rules are there for safety, pure and simple."
Local on 10/20/2018