LEHMAN TOWNSHIP, LUZERNE COUNTY — Many felt the brunt of Thursday night’s powerful storm, including a fair that’s been around for generations, but organizers and volunteers rallied together to open the gates of the Luzerne County Fair Friday night.
Organizers say it took a tremendous effort to reopen the fairgrounds for Friday night.
Sunny skies Friday morning over the Luzerne County fairgrounds. You couldn’t tell that a powerful storm blew on Thursday night.
“A lot of vendors booths went down with it, made a mess on the grounds, a lot of local flooding here. Some trees and wires down, we lost power of course,” said Amanda Faneck, marketing and PR coordinator for the Luzerne County Fair.
Organizers worked overnight to clean up the destruction. Cherry Hill Farms of Huntington Mills was one of the vendor booths that was impacted.
“It was like a tornado in the trailer. We didn’t even get time to shut the doors, shut the back door. Coming through the inside, stuff, metal pans that I got on the bottom shelf they were just flying off from the bottom of the shelf,” described Terry Brown from Cherry Hill Farms of Huntington Mills.
Brown says their section was hit hard. All of the neighboring vendors helped each other after the storm swept away tents and signage.
“Just throwing stuff away, replacing what got destroyed, bringing new stuff in, and stuff like that. And thank god they got the power back on. That’s a huge help right there,” stated Brown.
Resilience is by far the theme of this year’s 61 annual Luzerne County Fair.
“It takes a team for sure. With the fairgrounds being a nonprofit and then run by local clubs, you know it’s those local clubs that were here and the volunteers putting this place back together last night and if it wasn’t for all of them we would not be opening today,” explained Daneck.
Organizers ask that you bring cash to the fair Friday night due to some internet connectivity issues. It’s open until 11:00 p.m., weather permitting.
