McAdenville’s Christmas lights were back on Sunday night, less than 24 hours after a traffic wreck left the famed and beloved display in the dark.
The single-vehicle collision that occurred about 8:50 p.m. Saturday was unrelated to Christmastown USA traffic. But it involved a car striking a utility pole, which in turn led to all the lights going out.
Hundreds of visitors in vehicles who had been waiting patiently for hours to see the lights suddenly found it hard to be in the holiday spirit. People who had parked and trekked into McAdenville on foot were equally out of luck.
“It’s not often you get a 70-degree day in McAdenville this late in December,” said Mel Collins, an executive with Pharr Yarns, which oversees the lights. “Unfortunately up until that point, it was by far our biggest evening for pedestrian traffic. There were a lot of strollers and babies.”
The trouble started when a westbound vehicle swerved off Wilkinson Boulevard/U.S. 74 near Mockingbird Lane, which is a short distance west of where traffic enters and exits McAdenville on Wesleyan Drive to see the lights. Two women in the car were injured and taken to a local hospital, but were expected to be OK, according to WSOC-TV.
The damage to the pole immediately caused the vast majority of the Christmas lights to go out. Officials then made the decision to shut off what lights were still on, Collins said.
“Obviously while the Christmas lights are important, nothing is more important than the safety of the visitors,” he said. “From a traffic control standpoint, it was creating an unsafe situation for traffic and pedestrians.
“With police having to deal with the situations they were, we had no choice but to completely shut it down until they could get things back under control.”
The N.C. Department of Transportation eventually posted a notice that the lights had been shut down.
The Christmastown lights run on 60 automatic timers that ensure they’re on from 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. weekdays, and until 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Workers had to walk around and manually reset half of those timers Sunday, Collins said.
“It required a lot of work,” he said.
On a heavy Saturday evening before Christmas, as many as 7,000 vehicles will come through McAdenville to see the lights. Collins said he sympathizes with the frustration of people who traveled there during a peak viewing time Saturday, and had to leave with nothing.
“We don’t anticipate it, but when things like this happen, we have to work extra closely with law enforcement to deal with it,” he said.
You can reach Michael Barrett at 704-869-1826 or twitter.com/GazetteMike.