Gridlocked

“On the first day, we had a plan in place,” Mt. Juliet Police Department Public Information Officer Tyler Chandler said. “We were deployed out there, because we truly didn’t know what to expect. No one reached out to us to explain what was going on. We just saw an advertisement. We did get a plan in place, because we have a history of events that have caused a lot of problems along that road.”

The Mt. Juliet Police Department was made aware of the event earlier in the week. According to a statement by Mt. Juliet Police Chief James Hambrick that was posted Friday, while the church is not within the city limits, Old Lebanon Dirt Road is in the city limits, and the department had a duty to ensure that Old Lebanon Dirt Road remains clear for safe vehicular traffic and emergency response, and also to assist private-property owners with trespassing issues.

“Previous large events on this property have created extreme congestion by blocking Old Lebanon Dirt Road and private property issues in the past,” Hambrick said in the release. “Therefore, the department began developing a contingency plan earlier this week to respond to community-impacting incidents, such as blocked roadways, unlawful parking, and trespassing. Early this morning, we began receiving reports of Old Lebanon Dirt Road blocked, and the department immediately responded.”

After responding to the reports, Mt. Juliet Police officers found traffic along the road in a gridlock. It took between an hour and half to two hours to clear the gridlock and to establish some organization in the traffic response.

“We also received complaints from many property owners along Old Lebanon Dirt Road where people had parked a car on their property and left it,” Chandler said. “Some properties had more than 20 vehicles parked in their front yard, without any permission, without any warning. They woke up to a front yard that was turned into a parking lot.”

Of the 11 vehicles that were towed, the majority of them were parked on private property, but some were parked in an unsafe manner along the roadway.

“The biggest gridlock was caused by everyone coming to the event thought parking was available, and when they got to the event, it was full,” Chandler said. “They didn’t know what to do, so many of them were just waiting in the road. That continued to stack up and stack up and stack up.”

Passenger vehicles were not the only ones delayed in getting to their destination. Wilson County school buses were late in completing their routes due to the traffic on Friday morning.

“Buses that typically go down that route and into those neighborhoods back where the event was being held were held up during the morning,” Wilson County School District Public Information Officer Bart Barker said. “We made schools aware that those buses would be arriving late.”

The buses that traversed the affected areas were approximately an hour late to drop students off at schools.

Due to the impact of the congestion crossing jurisdictions, the Mt. Juliet Police Department coordinated with the Wilson County Sheriff’s office to clear the roadway.

“There were times of extreme traffic congestion in and around the area, which is obviously unsafe for any type of emergency response,” Wilson County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Scott Moore said. “Whenever you have a situation like that, you want to maintain travel, especially if there’s an emergency where police, fire, or ambulances need to get through the area to respond to a situation.”

Both the Mt. Juliet Police Department and the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office received several calls regarding blocked roadways and trespassing as a result of vehicles parked on private property.