Fort Stewart’s Independence Day celebration canceled due to weather

FORT STEWART, Ga. (WTOC) – Nature’s fireworks dampened Independence Day celebrations at Fort Stewart.

Just minutes into the night’s first performance, organizers closed the grounds as the storms rolled in.

It was supposed to be part of the Army base’s Marne Independence Day celebration featuring fireworks, food trucks, and free concerts from Grammy award winning R&B group Dru Hill and country star Trace Adkins.

But instead of fireworks, fans sat inside their cars for more than an hour before officials canceled the event that means so much to those at Fort Stewart.

“When you spend your days and nights sometimes, and weeks at a time away from your family and you’re hardworking it’s really great to be able to do something like this for free,” said Courtney Due, the USO Program and Operations Manager.

This year’s event was slated to be the first at full capacity since the start of the pandemic.

An effort that took a lot of work say event organizers.

“Meeting after meeting. Numbers after numbers, calculating out what was the risk? What was the reward? What was possible? And we finally gave our leadership team enough confidence to say, ‘You know what? The MWR team, our emergency services team. We can do this let’s make it happen,’” said Tyler Gierber, the Deputy Director for FMWR.

And while they tried to make it happen, the weather had other plans.

As other July 4th celebrations are planned in the coming days across the area, organizers are hoping to avoid a weekend weather washout.

Fort Stewart officials have not released any plans to reschedule Friday’s event.

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