BUFFALO, N.Y. — Up to 1 million visitors are expected across Western New York on April 8 for the total solar eclipse.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said he is not ruling out declaring a state of emergency on that day.
"It's something I'll consider, but if I did, it's not something that general public would even notice. It's not like there would be driving bans. The roads will be open. We want people to traverse. What we're afraid of is there's going to be so many vehicles on the roads, that they're just going to come to a standstill," he said.
"I may declare it just so that we have additional resources that we potentially can put out. We have a lot of resources coming in. You have the ability to declare a state of emergency for basically two major things one, which is an ongoing disaster or imminent threat of harm to the public. We don't believe it'll be a disaster. There could be an imminent threat of harm to the public, if we have so many people in the community, that it just allows us to not do our work as we normally would, it prevents us from getting out there and doing the work that we would like to," Poloncarz said.
For any groups that are now planning multi-person events, he said don't do it.
"Our recommendation is don't, just get out and enjoy it," Poloncarz said. "Enjoy your family, county will be closed, the school districts are closing, and so it just makes sense to enjoy what really is going to be a once in a lifetime experience."
Traffic could be a nightmare.
"Add at least 500,000 more people to our community, maybe a million when you include between Erie County and Niagara Falls at least. It's going to be a ridiculous amount of traffic that we have never seen in this," Poloncarz said.
Dr. James D. Reynolds, professor and chair at the Ross Eye Institute, is concerned about young children.
"Preschool children probably should only view with indirect methods and they should definitely be supervised. Children should not be out unsupervised and able to view this in any way," Dr. Reynolds said. "So, you know, it's not surprising, and it's always children that are most at risk, right? And so I think, as a society, we have to think about, what are we doing for the children that day, I just heard that the schools are all going to be out.
Dr. Reynolds added: "So that means there's no teacher with a scripted organized activity for the day. And it will depend on the teachers educating these students. And I think the students going home and educating their parents about, oh, I learned how to indirectly view this eclipse mom, and oh, this is going to be a lot of fun. And the mother looks online, and she gets familiar with it. So this is going to be a lot of fun. And everybody can have fun with it. But you just have to be safe. And again, there is no safe viewing of the sun with the naked eye."