Almost two weeks after the largest Orange Crush festival took place on Tybee Island, residents’ frustrations and anger had hardly quelled. For more than an hour during last Thursday’s forum, a full chamber of community members criticized city officials for failing to control the flood of people and cars that choked the island community for nearly three days in April.
Orange Crush, an HBCU beach bash that regularly draws tens of thousands of visitors, is the island’s largest unofficial event. This year, the festival returned to Tybee with unprecedented force, alarming city officials, residents and public safety teams, who say the small island simply cannot handle the flood of 40,000 to 50,000 visitors at once.
Throughout the Orange Crush weekend, which took place April 21 to 23, cars blocked the only road on and off the island. Multiple public safety incidents, including a road rage shooting, drug overdoses and the sounds of gunfire were reported. The traffic delayed emergency and public safety vehicles. The cascade of events even drew concern from Governor Brian Kemp, who called Georgia State Patrol to look into the situation on Tybee.
Talks of handling the crush of tourism on the beach community are not new and have grown louder over the years. But at the center of each debate lies a push and pull between the community’s needs and the people’s right to access the public beach.
“This was no ordinary event”
The events of this year’s Orange Crush, however, have prompted local officials to make the case for more local government control on how to handle crowds of this size in the future.
At Thursday night’s forum, city officials told residents that they are working on an emergency response plan that will mitigate the potential of a similar “man-made” crisis. One of the first steps is drafting a resolution that asks for more local control on decisions, such as declaring a state of emergency, diverting traffic from state-owned U.S. 80 and restricting or dispersing crowds on the beach.
That resolution will be made public in the May 11 council meeting agenda.
The crowd this year was double that of past Orange Crush Weekends, according to data collected by the city. More than 110,000 visitors flocked to the island over the three-day festival.
Credit: RJ Smith/Savannah Morning News
Credit: RJ Smith/Savannah Morning News
While Tybee has seen crowds of 30,000 on a popular summer day, nearly 50,000 people were on the island on Saturday, April 22. Additionally, most people were concentrated on the beach. Thousands of cars were driving onto the island between late morning and evening, which is dangerous, said City Manager Shawn Gillen.
The sheer volume of cars and people coming onto the island at one time is what made this year’s festival different from past Orange Crushes and different from other large celebrations, according to city officials.
Car accidents and a road rage shooting at Fort Pulaski then exacerbated the gridlock on U.S. 80 and caused traffic to spill into nearby island communities. The emergency lane was blocked as well, which delayed the emergency response.
“This was no ordinary event,” said Tybee Island Mayor Shirley Sessions. “This problem is bigger than Tybee.”
Gillen assured residents that a backup emergency response was in place. The Tybee Island Marine Rescue Squadron and an existing partnership with the U.S. Coast Guard can provide water and air assistance in the event of a medical evacuation emergency.
“We have those backup partnerships every day of the week,” said Gillen.
“Let somebody else do your job”
Throughout the evening residents expressed their frustrations with the city’s lack of preparedness for this year’s Orange Crush crowd. Calls for city officials to resign, which circulated on social media, spilled into the public comment portion of the forum.
Cindy Wilson kicked off the first public comment that night with a question to the city manager: “What I would really like to know is when you’re going to resign and let somebody else do your job.”
After the applause and cheers died down, Gillen said he will not be resigning.
“We did the best we could under the circumstances. We were looking at something that was unprecedented. No one here knew it was going to be twice as many people,” said Gillen.
Credit: Josh Galemore
Credit: Josh Galemore
Keith Gay, who runs Tybee Beach Vacation Rentals, shifted the blame to the promoters of Orange Crush.
“The promoter … he’s the only one who makes money. He’s the only one who walks away unfettered. The level of promotion this year … it was absolutely relentless,” said Gay
Cody Gay, Keith’s son, also emphasized holding the promoters accountable for drawing the large crowd.
“I really want to see legal action taken against this individual or group of individuals,” said Gay. “It’s a repetitive problem, it’s been going on for years and it really needs to be taken to task.”
Gillen said the city attorney would have to address any potential legal avenues.
Britain Wigfall, who had previously identified himself as the main promoter for this year’s Orange Crush festival, sat in the crowd that evening. Reached for comment after the forum, Wigfall acknowledged residents’ anger and frustrations, but clarified that he “does not make money off of the beach.”
“It was intense,” said Wigfall “I feel like they’ve got a lot of things planned for the future. People were allowed to get things off their chest. But to be honest, it is multiple promoters that piggyback off of Orange Crush.”
The festival has traditionally been unpermitted ever since Savannah State University cut its sponsorship ties in 1991 after a string of public safety incidents. Thus, no special event application is filled out with the city and no official promoter is named. That also makes it difficult to hold an individual or group liable for the negative impacts of the event.
Credit: Josh Galemore
Credit: Josh Galemore
In the past, George Ransom Turner III, the owner of the official Orange Crush Festival trademark, has been recognized as one of the main promoters. Turner moved the festival to Jacksonville Beach in 2021, citing civil rights violations and a lack of resources. Jacksonville city officials said celebrations were muted that year due to cancellations and a rain storm.
Wigfall said he cannot control how other groups promote Orange Crush and vendors that charge for parties or events affiliated with the festival. But, Wigfall said he wants to step in and try to work with the city on regulating some aspects of the event.
“I’m the individual who wants to make the event more structured,” said Wigfall.
Sessions said the city is willing to work with anyone on permitting the event, so that the city can better anticipate the crowd numbers and institute public safety protocols. But the issue is whether or not someone will want to be “responsible for over 50,000 people,” noted Sessions. A special event application requires the applicant to have liability insurance.
City officials are planning to meet with county and regional leaders. No meeting has been scheduled yet between Wigfall and Tybee officials.
“Cut it off ...cut it down”
Past efforts to quell the spring break-like revelry of Orange Crush have led to tensions between the city and residents. In 2017, local officials instituted bans on alcohol and loud music on the beach and also called in additional law enforcement for the weekends Orange Crush was held. Those bans were set to be enacted again in 2018.
However, a group of concerned citizens led by the founder of Tybee MLK, Julia Pearce, pointed out that the city should not be treating the Orange Crush – a crowd of predominantly HBCU students – differently than other events such as the Fourth of July. The dispute led to intervention from the Department of Justice’s Comunity Relations Service, and an agreement between the city and its concerned citizens was drafted.
That agreement ultimately stated that the city must treat all large events, permitted or unpermitted, with the same standard protocols. That means law enforcement from other jurisdictions cannot be brought on the island for Orange Crush, unless they are brought in for other events as well.
Gillen also noted that banning alcohol consumption for a particular event or weekend will have to be taken to the state delegation and enacted by special legislation.
However, considering this year’s crowd and series of public safety incidents, city officials said the terms of the DOJ agreement need to be reconsidered.
“I think they [the council] agree that this resolution is no longer valid in the context of numbers we saw,” said Gillen, “The next year we will take a much more aggressive approach with the number of law enforcement officers we have and the traffic controls.”
Credit: Laura Nwogu/Savannah Morning News
Credit: Laura Nwogu/Savannah Morning News
Additional public safety teams were called in this year. In addition to Tybee Island’s police, fire and public works, the Savannah Fire Department (SFD) and Chatham Emergency Services (which has a working relationship with Tybee) were called to the island. The Georgia State Patrol (GSP) and Chatham County Police Department (CCPD) provided assistance on U.S. 80. GSP troopers were later deployed to the island as well. Members of the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office were also present.
All told, Tybee Island was covered by 40 sworn law enforcement officers, eight code enforcement officers, 23 public works employees, 13 fire-rescue personnel and seven parking enforcement employees.
However, that was not enough to handle the tens of thousands of visitors, said Tybee Island Police Department chief Tiffany Hayes. The chief pointed out that the recommended ratio of officers to people is 2.5 per 1,000. That would mean around 125 to 150 officers for a crowd of 50,000.
“I’m not doing this again. I’m calling in everyone,” said Hayes, “Y’all can address that agreement, but for me, for public safety, for what my officers went through, for what the citizens went through ... I am not having my hands tied by this agreement again.”
Towards the end of the forum, resident Jeff Bowers stood up and declared that the “DOJ ought to have their butts in this room,” and called for the city to “squelch” events like Orange Crush.
“There were hours they owned the island, they owned it. We were trapped,” said Bowers. “Where is the will to move forward? If you can’t cut it off then cut it down.”
Nancy Guan is the general assignment reporter covering Chatham County municipalities. Reach her at nguan@gannett.com or on Twitter @nancyguann.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: ‘Squelch it’: Tybee Island residents call for end of Orange Crush
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