There's a sheet on the Provo City Library grounds, bleachers up and down University Avenue and firework shells littering the area outside Brigham Young University's LaVell Edwards Stadium, but for the most part, Provo is running normally again after its annual three-day Independence Day extravaganza.
The Freedom Festival ended about 10:30 p.m. Saturday with the Stadium of Fire conclusion, and minor cleanup started immediately. Volunteers, including Boy Scout troops and ROTC units, descended on the stadium and got rid of trash, picked up chairs and did other jobs. Much of the cleanup, like the huge stage on the south end, would have to wait for another day, said executive director Paul Warner.
"Sunday's a dead day, we call it, in the stadium," he said.
Freedom Festival volunteers will take several weeks to carefully clean up the stadium and fix anything that needed to be fixed, then sit down with BYU officials for what Warner called a final accounting.
"We try to go through it very carefully, and then of course BYU will go through and check for any damage and things that need to be fixed up after we're through," he said.
Vendors involved with Freedom Days, the fair on the Utah County Government grounds and the Provo Tabernacle park, had to clean up their areas and remove the booths by midnight Saturday, Warner said.
On Sunday, Center Street was still blocked off between 100 West and University Avenue and the grounds didn't look as pristine as they normally did, but a passerby might not have known that the grounds had played host to thousands of people since Thursday.
"They know their responsibility there," Warner said.
University Avenue, which is the Grand Parade route, was cleaned up, with the exception of a few sets of bleachers and a couple of camping sites.
Assistant director Candice Copple said many of the cleanup crew were working overtime Saturday night, but because it was in conjunction with the Provo Tabernacle, they did not have to work on Sunday. The stage on the Tabernacle ground will be dismantled today.
• Heidi Toth can be reached at 344-2556 or htoth@heraldextra.com.
Posted in Provo on Monday, July 6, 2009 12:10 am Updated: 4:45 pm. | Tags: Provo, Freedom Festival, Paul Warner
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