Hot Springs has plenty of things scheduled for the weekend leading up to the total solar eclipse on April 8, and the Hot Springs Police Department has finalized its plans for how to deal with the influx of people anticipated to flock here for the celestial event.
The city will experience 3 minutes and 37 seconds of totality starting shortly after 1:49 p.m. and ending around 1:53 p.m., but the partial eclipse of the sun will last from around 12:32 p.m. to 3:10 p.m. While the event will last less than three hours, HSPD and other agencies have been planning how to handle the possible flood of visitors for more than a year.
"Going back over a year ago, we first started talking about the fact that we're going to have this total eclipse in Hot Springs and the date of it and the times and all that stuff and the things we need to prepare for," HSPD Chief Billy Hrvatin said.
"At one point, we had some folks in here from Wyoming because they went through the one they went through (in 2017) and some of that was they had a lot of issues. Of course, they're totally different than we are, but they did have a lot of issues. So we started looking at what their issues were and things that maybe we needed to plan for and mitigate."
As part of the preparation, the police department held meetings with other emergency services, hospitals and city and county leadership, Hrvatin said.
"We've had several of those countywide meetings -- Office of Emergency Management, all of our public safety entities, the hospitals, the schools, the forestry service," he said.
"Anybody and everybody you can think of that really needs to come to the table that provides service to the public really has come to the table in some form or fashion, and we've talked about the things we all need to be preparing for. That's been going on for several months now, so everybody's kind of got their plan in place now, I think."
Hrvatin said HSPD will be "overstaffed" throughout the weekend leading up to the eclipse and the day of the event.
"We canceled our vacation for a week's span," he said. "We told all of our officers, all of our uniformed officers, to be prepared to work. So our plan going into the eclipse weekend is that everybody's going to be working.
"We will scale that back if we need to. If we figure out we don't need quite the manpower that we have scheduled or that we have on the street, and we can send guys home that are" working on their regular day off, he said.
"But we will bring all the resources to bear obviously."
HSPD will be working with the fire department to provide food and a place to rest for officers, as well.
"If traffic is really bad, if all the restaurants are backed up, then our guys can't wait 90 minutes to get lunch," he said. "So we're going to have food at the fire stations and stuff for our folks and also for the firemen, obviously. We're going to use the fire departments for resting places for our officers and for them to get a snack or a meal break or whatever and be able to get off the street for a little bit and then right back on the street."
There will be two officers to each car, Hrvatin said, reducing the need for multiple cars responding to a single incident.
"We're not going to have single-officer cars," he said. "We're going to have two per car. We'll have twice as many supervisors in the field. They're going to be separated on the north side of town, south side of town, so it's not as hard for them to get around and deal with things."
They have three drones that will be available, he said. "They'll be out in cars in case we need to put those up in the air for some reason to get a view of something. So we're going to bring all the resources to bear really."
Hrvatin said the fact the department handles large amounts of traffic each year for Arkansas Derby Day helps them be prepared for events that bring in large numbers of people.
"We provide a lot of security out there, and a lot of traffic support, and we do that every year," he said.
"There's certain things that we do at Oaklawn for Derby Day behind the scenes a lot of people don't even know about really, but we provide that support and we work real close with them.
"And we will be out there this weekend, (today) for (the) derby. We'll have a large contingent officers on scene. Of course, we will deal with the traffic, but we're also there just for a security and safety standpoint," he said.
"But those kind of events do help us plan for this kind of thing because we do those annually, particularly their two biggest days -- for Derby Day and Apple Blossom."
Residents are encouraged to stock up on supplies, such as food and fuel, in case travel in the days surrounding the eclipse is difficult.
"Try to avoid the roadways if you can. Think about getting things early -- get your medicines early, get your fuel early. Make sure you do your grocery shopping early. That way you don't have to get caught in the traffic and stuff because if we do have a very large influx of people in town, we could also run short on supplies, obviously fuel being one of those," he said.
"We all saw how things were during COVID. I don't know that it'll be to that extent, but it might be a little difficult to get the groceries that you want to get."