Prensa. voanews.com
Hyrum Johnson, mayor of the tiny city of Driggs, Idaho, expects some
craziness in his one-stoplight town next month when the moon passes in front of
the sun for the first total solar eclipse in the lower 48 U.S. states since
1979.
The town of 1,600 people in Teton County, just west of the jagged peaks
of the Rocky Mountains Teton Range, is getting poised to receive as many as
100,000 visitors on Aug. 21 for the celestial event, said Johnson, who was both
excited and worried.
Driggs is one of hundreds of towns and cities along a 70-mile arc,
stretching from Oregon to South Carolina, that are in the direct path of the
moon's shadow. The full eclipse and the sun's corona around the disk of the
moon will be visible for a little more than two minutes only to those within
this narrow band.
Driggs and other towns like it are scrambling to prepare for the
onslaught of curious visitors. "We expect gridlock," Johnson, 46,
said as he drove his pickup truck through town. Tucked amid seed potato and
quinoa farms, Driggs normally enjoys a more languid pace of life, with
highlights including $5 lime shakes sold on balmy summer days at the corner
drug store.
But with the impending eclipse, planning has kicked into high gear. To
make sure nothing more than the roads will be clogged, Johnson took shipment
this month of two massive generators that can be deployed at key spots along
the city's sewage system to keep it flowing in case of a power outage.
"We are telling our residents to hunker down," Johnson said.
And while Johnson would have preferred to have taken his family
backpacking during the time of the eclipse, he's planning to stay in town in
case anything goes wrong.
'All hands on deck'
Over on the east side of the Teton Range, authorities are preparing for
the day "kind of like a fire," said Denise Germann, a public
information officer at Grand Teton National Park. Estimating crowds is nearly
impossible, she said, but "it is an 'all hands on deck' event."
The 480-square-mile park's campsites are completely booked, and it
expects visitors to pour in from all over, including the bigger Yellowstone
National Park, just north of the path of totality. Grand Teton will waive its
$30 entry fee to keep traffic from backing up.
Many of the park's 465 summer staff will be posted at trailheads and
along roads to warn visitors to brace themselves for failed cellphone service,
jammed roads and scarce parking, and to urge them to carry plenty of food and
water, as well as bear spray to ward off wildlife.
In nearby Moose, Huntley Dornan said the county had warned business
owners like him to expect four times the usual number of customers in the days
leading up to the eclipse. "I find that hard to believe, but I'm not going
to be the guy who has his head in the sand and didn't plan for it," said
Dornan, who runs a restaurant, deli, gas station and wine shop, the last place
to get supplies before entering the park from the south.
Dornan plans to park a 48-foot refrigerated trailer stocked with a
couple of thousand pounds of pizza cheese, 150 pounds of ground buffalo meat, a
few hundred tomatoes, and gallons of ice cream, among other provisions for the
expected hordes of tourists.
On eclipse day, only people who paid as much as $100 each to attend his
viewing parties will be allowed access to the narrow road on his property that
offers a clear view. Security will keep others out.
About 14 miles down the highway, in Jackson, Wyoming, Bobbie Reppa
expects the family business to be flush with demand. She and her husband run
Macy's Services, the only purveyor of portable toilets for miles. The 50 she
normally has on hand simply aren't enough. "We'll be bringing them in from
as far as Ogden, Utah," she