Roads to close for Lowellville festival

By jeanne starmack

starmack@vindy.com

lowellville

The box truck was not supposed to be on the hill in the first place, said Lowellville Police Chief Bill Vance.

There are signs posted that say “no trucks,” but the truck driver ended up there anyway.

In the village below, the Mount Carmel Society Festival parade was just beginning to turn the corner to the festival grounds near the bottom of the hill on Quarry Road.

Vance and another village police officer had just moved their cruiser away from a retaining wall near the bottom of the road. Then the truck, which was carrying ice, went out of control.

“He didn’t have brakes, and he saw the crowd,” Vance said Thursday. The driver hit the wall at the spot where Vance and the other officer had been just a short time before, and the box flipped off the back of the truck. “There were parts that slid down the road, and a couple people got minor injuries,” Vance said.

That was last year. This year, he said, police intend to keep tight control over traffic during the parade, which will be July 16, and the festival, which begins July 18 and continues through July 21.

“We are beefing up the safety due to the accident,” he said. “We’re very fortunate no one got killed.

“We urge traffic to be extra-cautious on that day,” he said.

The parade begins at 9:30 a.m. at the Mount Carmel Society Club on Washington Street. It proceeds to Water and Third streets, then stops at 10 a.m. for a Mass at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church on Wood Street. The parade leaves the church and heads down Wood Street to McGill then Liberty street, then proceeds across the tracks and the bridge to McGaffney Street, where it again stops for a short ceremony. It goes up Monroe to Jackson streets and then to the festival grounds. The parade lasts three hours.

Quarry Road at Kennedy Road will be shut down, Vance said. Cruisers will be at different locations on the parade route.

Vance said that during the festival days, Quarry at Kennedy Road and Washington Street will close at 5 p.m. The festival begins each night at 6 p.m. He said there will be barricades until people clear the festival grounds between midnight and 1 a.m.

“Roads will be opened after the festival when I deem it safe,” he said. No parking will be allowed on Quarry Road.

Vance said people who need to come to Lowellville should do so on Lowellville or River roads or on state Route 289.