Update April 7, 2016:

According to the Savannah Morning News is reporting that an effort to ban alcohol in Tybee Island for the month of April did not pass. 

The motion that would have banned alcohol consumption in public areas such as beaches, parks, parking lots, walkways and sidewalks failed to pass on first reading. The proposal is aimed at limiting the drinking by underage attendees of the unofficial event Orange Crush that is scheduled to take place at Tybee the weekend of April 15th and April 16th as well as the influx of student on Spring Break Tybee experienced this year.

Councilwoman Wanda Doyle said the time to pass a measure had come and gone.  According to Doyle, a committee after the Orange Crush event last year recommended that an ordinance banning open air consumption be passed.  

“For whatever reason, it was never discussed,” Doyle sad. “We are a week and a half out of Orange Crush, and if don’t have our plans in place by now, shame on us.”

According to Savannah Morning News, the city has made preparations to handle the influx of people that are expected for Orange Crush.  Tybee is bringing in officers from other places to help with crowd control as well as supplying decals for locals so they can have better access to their neighborhoods.

While the ban is not passed for now, there is still a chance that it could be revisited later. Tybee Police Chief Bob Bryson told Savannah Morning News that a ban is something he would support.

 “Do we the laws in place now and enough ordinances to take care of what we need to do? Yes. We do,” Bryson said. “We have plenty of things in place now… But we can’t do this every weekend… [An open air consumption ban] would definitely help as far as an enforcement issue.”

http://savannahnow.com/news/2016-04-06/tybee-island-council-drops-april-alcohol-ban-proposal

The Savannah Morning News is reporting that Tybee Island officials are looking to ban open-air consumption of alcohol, including parking lots, sidewalks, walkways, parks or beaches, for the month of April.

Tybee police chief, Bob Bryson said the amendment to the city’s current alcohol ordinance is aimed at limiting the consumption of alcohol at the annual Orange Crush, an unofficial event organized by college students on social media that takes place each year on the beach at Tybee.

According to social media, the event will take place the weekend of April 15th and April 16th and possibly again the following weekend.

Bryson told the Savannah Morning News that the proposal is not aimed to punish people that are drinking but acting responsibly because police will not be patrolling the beach to see who has a drink in their hand,

“People will still be drinking and drinking on the beach- we get it,” Bryson said. “It’s just the open air, throwing it back. We try to tout ourselves as a family beach.”

According to WJCL news, Tybee officials have been preparing for the event for a while. The city is bringing police officers from out of town to help with patrolling and also using volunteers to help take reports and set up barricades.

All this is in response to last year’s event where 45 people were arrested and one person was shot.