Mardi Gras parade safety improvements

History won’t repeat itself, not if Biloxi police and officials have anything to do with it. It’s been nearly one year since a young man from Ocean Springs died after an unusual accident at a Mardi Gras parade on Fat Tuesday.
News 25’s Caroline Eaker ventured out to the streets of downtown Biloxi today to see what new plans are in place to keep parade goers safe.
As with any Fat Tuesday, revelers crowded the Mardi Gras parade route in Biloxi last year to watch the good times roll. Ocean Springs native Braydon Hester was one of them until things took a turn for the worse in an accident that eventually would take Hester’s life, hitting the community hard as evidenced by an interview with police that evening.
It all happened under the overpass on Howard Avenue when the 20-year-old fell off the back of a truck and landed on a piece of rebar. This year, Biloxi city officials have devised a plan to make sure that parade goers stay safe. Police Chief John Miller said, “This is another traffic device, a crowd control device. You can see it sticks into the ground, it’s looped at the top for safety and then it has these eyelets that we can run nylon rope through. We feel like it’s certainly much safer.”
City officials say rebar will not be seen anywhere along the Biloxi Parade route this year, but there will be plenty of safeguards all around. Vincent Creel with City of Biloxi Public Affairs said, “What we do is we work our plan, our safety plans on things that we have learned from the past. Obviously we had a tragedy that occurred last year at Mardi Gras. We are going to use barricades this year and those barricades will be augmented by yellow caution tape and no parking signs.”
It won’t be long before you see these things, the Gulf Coast Carnival Association’s Mardi Gras parade is set to roll through Biloxi on Fat Tuesday, February 13th.