On 1/30/2014 Ismilealot said: Well, they may need to invest in more salt trucks through the DOT. First and foremost, drivers have to know their limitations and NOT go out in such conditions if they aren't able to navigate in it.
I know what you're saying but most people were at work and everyone left to go home at about the same time. The roads just are not designed for everyone to be on them at the same time. Rush hour here starts at about 5:30 in the morning and lasts till 7:30 at night. This same thing happened here in 1982, but Atlanta's population wasn't what it is today. We had Snow Jam '82. It hit suddenly. It took my sister 9 hours to get home from work. Well, she never made it home. She walked the last mile on foot to my parent's condo. That was 32 years ago. Those of us who have lived here that long still talk about it. People who weren't here then just roll their eyes when we do. Now people will talk about snow jam 14. And no one who went through '82 would have thought it would ever happen again. But people don't have great memories and it did.
In my opinion, the schools should have been closed here- all day. They close for everything. Every time I turn around, the kids are out of school. Early release day for this, off for that. But they use this day to draw a line in the sand. No, by gosh, we're having school today. Absolutely ridiculous. They start school at the beginning of August and they're out in mid-May. How about building a few more snow days in there and go later in May. So, the schools should have been closed.
Then you have the private businesses. Atlanta is a huge city, when you consider the suburbs, spread over several counties, all with different political officials, hundreds of miles. Not everyone works in downtown Atlanta and not everyone lives close to their place of employment. So, most companies did early release and that clogged the roads in the burbs in addition to the gridlock everyone has seen on the national news on the city's highways.
The politicians are now talking about staggered release for the businesses. Most businesses aren't going to pay attention to that just as a lot of them probably didn't pay attention today that we had a state of emergency till noon and we were asked to stay off the roads till then. They're going to do what they want to as are most people. Some just don't pay attention and think the rules are for someone other than them.
The politicians in the city and surrounding counties absolutely knew the forecast unless they slept several days straight going into this. I am weather obsessed and watch the local channels as well as The Weather Channel. Everyone and their brother knew well in advance that we were going to get something. They first said it would be a mostly southern Atlanta event, with the Northern suburbs getting a dusting and that it would start at about 9 in the morning. I paid no attention to that. Too close for comfort for me. Very early Tuesday morning, like 4 AM, the Winter Storm warning had been extended further north to include Atlanta and the suburbs. PLENTY of time to declare a state of emergent and cancel the schools then. But they didn't do it. I'm an extremely organized person. So, I planned for a big event several days ahead. Scheduled doctors appointments accordingly. Went grocery shopping two or three days before and was made fun of by friends for doing so. We brought firewood in from the driveway to our garage the day before. We filled both cars up with gas. Well, we haven't left the house in 3 days and we haven't run out of anything, so my friends can go ahead and make fun.
I'm always amazed by the lack of preparedness by some people. I was on Facebook today on one of the storm groups. Someone was lamenting that they were totally out of bread and when, oh when, would the grocery stores have more. I have very little sympathy. Unless you've been feeding people who were stranded in your neighborhood that caused your supply to dwindle unexpectedly or you didn't have the money to buy groceries, why on earth did you not plan ahead of time and have everything you need. How could you possibly not have enough supplies. This wasn't a surprise to us.
After storms like this, I always do a sort of post-mortem for our household. What did we do right at our house. What could we have done better. What supplies did we run low on. Is our battery supply good. How about the firewood, medications. And that's what the city and all the surrounding counties hopefully will do now.
We have salt and sand trucks. But you're talking hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of miles of interstates, state, county and back roads. Those trucks can't be everywhere at once.
And you've all seen the footage of the traffic on the interstates and all the tractor trailers. Those trucks are from all over. How do you stop them from coming into the city and contributing to the gridlock.
I apologize for the rambling post on the storm in general, but I do want to make one comment to the OP, who said she was inclined to laugh this off initially when she thought it was "just" snow.
A 14 year old girl who was helping her sister move her mother's car, which she'd had to abandon the other day, had one of her legs severed below the knee today, when another car lost control on the ice and hit her. Doctors are trying to re-attach her leg. What is funny about other people's misfortunes, whether it was snow or ice? It made you feel better to find out that it was ice and not just snow, but our situation here wasn't funny, even if it had been snow. I know what you meant by your statement and I'm not really upset by it, but there was really nothing to scoff at with what happened to our city. People were stranded on the roads for hours and hours, overnight, some for two days. People ran out of gas, had medical issues, had no food. It's not funny.
I grew up in Boston and New Jersey. The snow events we get here aren't like the Northern snows. We usually always get a thin layer of ice just under or on top of the snow. On the national news, it looks like we can't drive in two inches of snow. It's always the ice that causes the problem.
Why is it, when I have a 50/50 guess at something, I'm always 100% wrong?
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