Sure, Five Fest was fun, but what a mess it made!

Beer cans sailed through the air like grenades as more than 14,000 Ohio University students and their friends partied in the giant field Saturday afternoon. Some wrestled in the mud, while others lighted fires. A hurricane of tipsy humanity à ¢Ã¢"š ¬" otherwise known as Five Fest à ¢Ã¢"š ¬" swept through the Stagecoach Road area.

Beer cans sailed through the air like grenades as more than 14,000 Ohio University students and their friends partied in the giant field Saturday afternoon. Some wrestled in the mud, while others lighted fires. A hurricane of tipsy humanity - otherwise known as Five Fest - swept through the Stagecoach Road area.

Seemingly everyone partied at Saturday's Five Fest, and some partied to the verge of alcohol poisoning, though no one was seriously injured. Yet it could have been worse.

"If someone got extremely hurt, how do we get that person to a squad car?" asked Athens County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Dave Malawista. "The promoter was focused on providing entertainment, but he wasn't thinking of these things."

Though he was not on duty, Malawista said he went to check on the 15 sheriff's deputies hired for security (Athens County only has 25 deputies) plus four special deputies on horseback. He said he stayed because the situation made him nervous, especially the lack of an onsite medical service to treat people who hurt themselves or drank too much.

"It was like a bus service," said Malawista of the patrol cars responsible for hauling partiers with minor injuries to the hospital. Deputies used a four-wheel utility vehicle to transport people to the squad cars, which would return from the hospital only to find another person needing transport for medical treatment.

Pictures posted on 5Fest.com and Facebook show students having a great time. But the event goers were lucky no serious injuries occurred and that they could leave the trashed site for their campus and city residences after the party was over. As of Tuesday, the soggy field, beside "Ervin's Big Red Barn," still looked like a landfill. Drenched cans and broken foam coolers littered the area.

"The homeowners now have a real mess with which to deal," wrote Elizabeth Rittenhouse Hoch, who lives near the site, in an e-mail to The Athens NEWS. "I realize that the promoter made a lot from the party. I thought he would be responsible to clean up the aftermath."

On Wednesday, she said the site remained a mess, not unlike what she recalled of Willard, Ohio, after a tornado struck in 1973.

The creator and organizer of Five Fest (and the previous four numbered Fests), Dominic Petrozzi, said he hired a crew to clean up the field and the neighborhood, but it may take a week or so. The cleanup "crew" is not a company but a man Petrozzi hired who has several workers. He said residents of the Stagecoach Road area have let him know about trash in their yard, and the cleanup crew will take care of it.

As for taking care of traffic, Petrozzi said he plans on redoing his bus strategy for Six Fest in 2009. Next year's plan could include more buses and bus assignments for each attendee. A better bus system could cut down on cars, he said, opening up the hilly and curvy roads that lead to the venue.
However, Saturday the roads were anything but clear. To increase the flow of traffic, a city police officer directed traffic on Richland Avenue, sending cars past the Dairy Lane intersection to North Blackburn Road off of U.S. Rt. 50.
This still resulted in gridlock, forcing some to walk instead of sit in the passenger seat of stalled cars. This resulted in litter, drinking and public urination all along the route.
Even Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl was caught in traffic because of the event, though he was not heading out to party with OU students. He was going to a wedding.
Because the Big Red Barn is located outside the city limits (on property listed to the Ervin family), Wiehl said it's out of the city's jurisdiction. He said plans to restructure Richland Road could cut down on traffic in the future. Coordination between Six Fest and the annual International Street Fair on Court Street (also on Saturday) could cut down on congestion, but Wiehl said the two event coordinators would have to settle that.
The mayor confirmed that he received two complaints, one regarding party goers walking through a resident's yard and another regarding traffic. He mentioned the complaints at Monday evening's City Council meeting.
In all, Athens Sheriff's Lt. Rodney Smith said fewer than five arrests occurred at the event, though other liquor citations may have been written. He did not have citation figures.
That small numbers supports what has become a mantra for Petrozzi and the Five Fest organizers and supporters.
"We're not doing anything that doesn't already happen on Court Street," Petrozzi said. "It's just a different location."