Now that festival goers are all packed up and back to their everyday lives and the Island has returned to normality, it seems right to take a sober look back at some of the issues that arose last week at the start of the Isle of Wight Festival.
With an understanding that the Festival will continue on the Island, perhaps it’s now the time to reflect – to ask the question, how do we ensure this never happens to the Island again?
Unprecedented disruption
As anyone who watches, listens to or reads local or national news will remember, last Thursday saw an unprecedented situation take place on the Island roads.
As festival goers started arriving on the Island, the impact of several months of heavy rain came to the fore, as cars struggled to get onto the Festival’s site car parks.
Traffic mayhem
This resulted in astonishing traffic delays across the north of the Island with, we understand, school children stuck on buses unable to get home until well into the evening; residents missing hospital appointments; the Police calling for the bus network to suspend operation; Police having to escort buses through the gridlock and at least one funeral convoy reportedly stuck in traffic.
The roads were so congested that Wightlink ferries had to stop running, because there was nowhere for cars to disembark to. This led to a backlog of road traffic in Portsmouth, with cars being redirected to Southsea Common whilst waiting for the ferry service to be reinstated.
We also saw reports of many festival goers having to sleep in their cars overnight and some school children were said to have missed important examinations.
“Leave your cars at home”
By Friday morning the festival organisers were advising those not yet on the Island to leave their cars on the mainland and travel by foot.
Not surprisingly, the situation sparked anger and frustration amongst many Island residents and businesses.
Council must review capacity says MP
After being contacted by many angry and concerned residents, on Friday Isle of Wight MP Andrew Turner said, “The problems have been very much worse than in previous years. The weather has played a part- that is beyond the control of organisers. However the ground was already wet and recent rain has been forecast for some time; expected traffic can also be forecast with some accuracy. Despite all that it appears that inadequate contingency plans and preparations were in place.
“The permitted Festival size was increased to 90,000 this year – that is too many and not all the tickets have been sold; if they had been the problems would be even worse. The Council should review that decision in the light of the widespread disruption and problems.
“They must also ensure more stringent and effective preparations and traffic plans are in place before the event can take place in future.”
Unpaid 4×4 volunteers get mud-jammed cars moving
Once it was evident that help was needed to move cars from the road into the car parks (fields) Vectis 4×4 Response Team were called in to help.
They towed hundreds of cars onto the festival car park on Thursday working until the early hours of Friday morning. The volunteers worked tirelessly for hours at a time helping to shift the build-up of traffic.
Over the next four days they continued to help out and were finally joined by 4×4 Response teams from other parts of the South coast.
Fantastic community effort
As we mentioned on Twitter and Facebook over the weekend, members of the Facebook Group, Emergency and Community Information For The Isle of Wight, rallied together to provide help and assistance for anyone caught up in the disruption.
Members offered spare beds, showers, hot drinks, food and clean clothes to those affected by the delays, mud, rain and gales.
A fantastic community effort demonstrated that those who were unhappy about the situation, were still willing to help those in need.
Even people from the Mainland freely offered their professional help.
Exit successful
The exit from the Island was far more orderly, with reports of some festival goers making their move home on the Sunday, pre-empting the potential chaos of Monday. As it turned out, they needn’t have.
Plans were put in place to stop festival goers from driving their cars off-site between 7.30am-9am on Monday morning, to enable Islanders to get to their place of work or study.
Following this, the departure seemed to go very well with few reports of any problems. James Fulford, Chief Exec of Red Funnel, commented on VentnorBlog that it had been “a breeze”.
Updates to follow
VB intends this to be the central report, and we’ll add links to other related articles that we publish over the coming days.
If there’s anything major that you think we’ve left out, let us know in the comments and we’ll add it.
Image: © jamesgillham/stillmoving.net
