St. Joseph County 4-H Fair Midway postponed from opening Friday afternoon

St. Joseph County, Ind. -- The St. Joseph County 4-H Fair is nearing the end of its run for this year and the heat postponed the Midway from opening Friday afternoon and may do the same tomorrow.

With today being the third consecutive day of 100 degree temperatures, attendance at this year' St. Joseph County 4H Fair is down.

Fair officials decided to postpone the time the rides open due to the heat! Officials think today's hour delay is going to hurt their attendance even more, so counteract this, officials have decided to keep the fair open an hour later tonight, to hopefully make up for the attendance loss this afternoon.

Lee Slavinskas, with the St. Joseph County 4H Fair said, “So we are lengthening our day by an hour, hoping that when it cools off people can come  out and enjoy the fair."

The Midway was scheduled to open today a 2pm, but when the temperature started to heat up this morning the fair operations staff decided to push back the time the rides and game area opened to 3pm.

If you are worried about the heat, you can take a break in many buildings that have air conditioning, and mist fans are placed throughout the fair grounds.

South bend fire and emergency techs are ready to respond for medical emergencies if needed. Andrew Myer a South Bend Fire Assistant Chief of EMS said, "Today we, South Bend Fire, we put up a fifth ambulance, we normally have 4 city ambulances in service, we put up a fifth ambulance just to be prepared  so if we have a high amount of heat related or any type of calls."

Slavinskas said so far they have had a handful of people who were requesting help cooling down. Those people were taken to the administrative offices at the fair where they were allowed to sit in air conditioning and drink water until they felt well enough to leave.

Fair officials said they might implement the same game plan for the last day of the fair tomorrow if the temperatures are just as hot tomorrow.