By Sadie Gurman, Amy Schaarsmith and Len Barcousky
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
PITTSBURGH — Police and firefighters worked into the morning today to clear city streets of deliriously happy Pittsburgh Steelers fans and to douse fires in Oakland set by students celebrating the team’s record sixth Super Bowl victory.
Thousands of people poured out of bars and residences on the South Side, Oakland, Downtown and the North Shore moments after the Arizona Cardinals fumbled away their last chance, giving the Steelers a 27-23 win.
Police reported at least 40 arrests and several minor injuries. Students in Oakland were prolific with matches, setting small fires on Semple, Wellsford, Atwood and Dawson streets, on Meyran Avenue near Louisa Street, and in front of the William Pitt Union at Forbes Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard.
Officers closed the Oakland side of the Birmingham Bridge about 10:30 last night so no more students from Oakland could get into the already overrun South Side.
On the South Side, officers materialized on East Carson Street at the conclusion of the game. Holding nightsticks beside their shields, they formed a human barricade near South 26th Street as fans, cheering and waving Terrible Towels, paraded along the street. Police had blocked East Carson and other major thoroughfares throughout the city at the end of the third quarter.
Officers on horseback blocked some South Side intersections while fans screamed, “Here we go, Steelers!’' Other officers used police dogs to help with crowd control.
Fans popped open champagne bottles, wrapped their arms around each other, and snapped photos of the celebration. Others posed with the line of stoic officers as a backdrop.
By 11:30 p.m., the South Side was relatively quiet.
But about the same time, an unruly crowd moved along Forbes Avenue from the middle of the Pitt campus, breaking a few windows as its members headed toward the intersection of Forbes and Craig Street.
Some officers, saying they were getting “overrun,’' called for backup to meet them in front of the Carnegie Museum.
The officers also called for a Port Authority bus to be sent into the area to hold people collared for disorderly conduct and other offenses.
Officers shouted, “Get on the sidewalk, get on the sidewalk!” but their pleas were mostly drowned out by the cheering crowd.
The crowd thinned out by 11:30 p.m., but those who remained were unruly. They trashed the bus shelter at Forbes and Bigelow, overturned refuse cans along their route, and started a huge bonfire on Forbes Avenue near the Hillman Library.
Another large fire was reported on Oakland Avenue near Sennott Street, and a third was burning on Atwood, where there were reports that the crowd was trying to push a car into the blaze.
By midnight, several hundred young people were still partying in the middle of Forbes between Bigelow and Bouquet Street, but the crowd was smaller and more orderly than it had been an hour earlier.
“It was brilliant chaos,” but still frightening, said Molly Hackman, a Pitt freshman from Lititz, Lancaster County. Some revelers were leaping 12 feet from the Hillman terrace, trusting that they’d be caught by those below them before hitting the ground.
A large contingent of the 400 officers on duty last night had been posted to the UPMC Sports Center on the South Side, and by game time, the training center there was filled with officers, eyes glued to several television sets.
They swapped horror stories about the 2006 Super Bowl, when thousands of fans descended upon the South Side after the Steelers beat the Seattle Seahawks, 21-10.
“We just want people to have a good time and we want to keep anything from getting out of hand,” Cmdr. Catherine McNeilly said. “We want everyone to be safe.”
About 9:30 p.m. officers on horseback began riding down East Carson Street. Left the sports center were SWAT team members, state troopers, county police and members of the city mobile crime unit.
Snacking on hotdogs and cookies, some of them groaned about working the big game, their chatter broken by collective cheers and occasionally collective groans as the game see-sawed late in the fourth quarter.
“Almost everyone who’s here would rather be watching at home,” one officer said.
After halftime, they boarded the Port Authority buses that would deliver them to East Carson Street.
With each play of the game, they made predictions: if the Steelers won, they would likely spend all night taming fans. If they lost they’d start handing out Kleenex.
As it turned out, they grabbed their shields and quickly filed onto buses to take them to the epicenter of the party.
The rowdiness had begun at halftime, when hundreds of people poured out of the Rex Theatre on East Carson, celebrating James Harrison’s 100-yard interception return for a touchdown. The score gave the hometown favorites a 17-7 lead with half the game left.
Some of the revelers from the Rex stampeded in front of a 51C Port Authority bus and began rocking it and banging on the windows. One man scaled the bus and celebrated atop it, and about a dozen other people followed his lead.
Two motorcycle police officers, showing restraint, coaxed the climbers down and cleared a path for the bus, sending the handful of startled riders on their way.
The police made no arrests, but other officers a few storefronts down the street made a show of pulling their riot gear from a paddy wagon so the crowd could see what it would be up against.
Copyright 2009 P.G. Publishing Co.