GLEN JEAN, W.Va.
— You will see a
lot of blue lights in parts of Fayette
County and Raleigh County
Years of planning from those with
the Boy Scouts of America, state officials, law enforcement
officers, local community leaders and others will come to a head next
week when more than 40,000 Boy Scouts and their leaders stream into the
New River Gorge area for the ten day event.
“There are, if you can imagine, 750
charter buses arriving Monday, the 15th. If you would stack that up, one
after another, that’s about seven miles of charter buses coming in,” said State
Police Captain Bill Scott.
“Within one day, or a ten to 12
hour period we hope, they’ll be able to put 32,000 Scouts and Scout leaders on
that property.”
That kind large scale movement will
take coordination in an area that has limited access points.
To help, Scott said Bradley
Crossing off Route 19 in Raleigh County will be used as a staging area for all of the
Scouts coming into the area on charter buses and will also be the starting
point for visitors to the Summit
More than five miles are between
Bradley and Glen Jean, the National Boy Scout Jamboree site. “To take a
proactive approach, we are manning about all the intersections,” Scott said of
the State Police plans to keep traffic moving.
“The event traffic, we’re going to
try to keep entirely on West Virginia Route 16 and Route 61, because there will
be enough traffic on U.S. 19 as it is. It’s pretty busy on a normal
basis.”
Captain Scott said even one traffic
crash could complicate those plans and possibly put more traffic onto Route
19. He said contingencies have been built into the plans.
On five of the Jamboree’s ten days,
a total of 6,000 Scouts will be taking buses from Glen Jean to community
service projects in nine West
Virginia
Another more than 2,500 Scouts will
be bussed out of the Summit
In all, more than 100 State Police
troopers will be in the New River Gorge area for the duration of the National
Boy Scout Jamboree. About 40 of those troopers are coming into the Mountain State
to help from detachments in Pennsylvania , Ohio , Virginia and Kentucky
In addition to working to keep
traffic moving, State Police troopers will also be providing security
assistance at the Summit
“We’ve had some large events in our
state with Bridge Day and the State Fair and with WVU football games, you have
60,000 people there, but the thing that’s different here is it is a ten day
event, and I realize the State Fair is a ten day event, but there are more
moving parts with this Boy Scout event,” said Scott.
This year is the first year for the
National Boy Scout Jamboree at the Summit Bechtel Reserve, its permanent
home. The site will host the World Boy Scout Jamboree in 2019.
The National Boy Scout
Jamboree begins Tuesday, July 16th and continues through Wednesday, July
24th.
