Here in the North, we are Prepared for Situations like the snow/ice that shut down Atlanta.
They weren't.
1.1 Million People hit the roads at the same time in the Atlanta Metro as the snow started to fly, and roads freezing...
State of Emergency declared at 5p Local time...
Commuters and schools unprepared...
Cars/School Buses abandoned...
More tonight on Situational Preparedness on USAEBN
Atlanta (CNN) -- [Breaking news update at 12:32 p.m. Wednesday]
Five people have died, and 23 people have been injured because of Tuesday's wintry weather in Alabama, the state Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday.
[Breaking news update at 12:28 p.m. Wednesday]
Asked if officials should have closed roads and urged people to stay home before Tuesday's snowfall, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal said Wednesday: "If we close the city of Atlanta and our Interstate system based on maybes, then we would not be a very productive (state or city)." He said that some forecasts called for just a dusting of snow. "It's easy to make judgment calls after the fact, but I daresay there's not anybody in this room that could have (predicted the degree) of the problem that developed."
[Breaking news update at 12:06 p.m. Wednesday]
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal on Wednesday said state government will close again on Thursday because of treacherous road conditions. He asked people to stay off the roads to give crews time to clear them.
[Breaking news update at noon Wednesday]
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal said officials plan to have all children who stayed in their schools overnight because of treacherous post-snow road conditions "transported as soon as possible back to their homes." Among those still in their schools Wednesday morning, Deal said: About 2,000 in the Fulton County school system and about 400 the in the Atlanta Public Schools. National Guard troops and state police will escort buses as they drop kids home, he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/29/us/winter-weather/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/usaebn/2014/01/29/situational-preparedness
The usually bustling roadways in the Atlanta metropolitan area resembled a scene in a post-apocalyptic world during and after Tuesday's snow and ice storm.
Cars abandoned at odd angles on side streets, thoroughfares and major interstates. People in this car-dependent city walked for miles, hunched over and huddled from the cold. Many had no coats, hats or gloves.
"It was a like a scene from The Walking Dead," said Maura Neill, 38, referring to the television series about a post-apocalyptic world overtaken by zombies.
"The mistake here is that no one expected the snow to hit as quickly," said Neill, who was stranded in gridlock for 10 hours.
Neill's story is typical of the chaos that gripped the region.
A real estate agent, Neill had lunch with her husband Tuesday as the snow began to fall. She left him at his job at 12:05, anticipating a 20 minute drive to her home from midtown Atlanta to the suburb of Johns Creek.
But after 45 minutes of getting nowhere on Interstate 75, she got off the highway and took a side road. And that's where she got stuck – for almost 7 hours. At one point, she stopped at a Target to use the bathroom and stretch her legs. It was a ghost town inside, she said.
She kept a running log of her progress on Facebook under the hashtag, Atlantarctica. By 7:30, she wrote, "I'm about to give up and find someone nearby with a spare room."
Friends in the nearby town of Dunwoody told her they had spare rooms. But she had to get to them first. And she was running out of gas. She waited 20 minutes at a station, only to have them run out of fuel when she was next in line.
"I was running on fumes," she said. She was three-quarters of a mile away from her friends' home when she ran into a police roadblock. The hill was closed because it was a sheet of ice.
So she left the car parked in a subdivision and walked. Neill was driving a rental, a Hyundai Sonata, because her SUV had been rear-ended. That meant she didn't have the usual supplies she kept in her vehicle, duck boots, blankets, water.
Instead, she was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater and "not very warm, but very cute" boots. She had no coat or other winter gear. She took off, walking on lawns because the road was too icy.
Along
the way, a man offered her a place to stay if she was stranded. He and
his wife were taking people in. Another man gave her hot chocolate and a
Rice Crispy treat. All around, she said, people were coming out to
help. She said big box retailers, such as Home Depot and the supermarket
Kroger, had let stranded people crash in the stores overnight. Kroger,
she said, was even cooking breakfast for its "guests."
Her friends met her part way. The couple had directed traffic for two hours, trying to get people home, she said. They also took in a 24-year-old girl who had been stranded in her car during the storm.
Neill's husband, meanwhile, was still stuck in his office Wednesday morning.
"People up north, they deal with it, but what people may not understand is that we don't have the infrastructure to deal with this," she said. "There are people here who have never lived through snow and ice."
By
Wednesday morning, the sun shone brightly, but many greeted the day
where they'd spent the night: their cars, schools, jobs or a friend's
couch.
Corey Smith, 23, was still in his compact Chevy Aveo at 10 a.m., right where he'd spent the last 11 hours on Interstate 285.
He'd left work at 5 p.m when his job as a beauty adviser at a local mall sent people home. And he ran straight into a traffic jam. He'd taken side roads, but when his car couldn't make it up a hill, he decided to get on the highway. He said cars were moving, slowly, but steadily, until 11 p.m. And then, he said, they just stopped.
Motorists started abandoning cars, trucks, school buses -- or like him, they slept in their cars, he said. He wasn't as prepared as he would have hoped. He was wearing a suit, but had no coat, hat or gloves. That's what kept him from walking in the cold.
He had no food or water, save for the chicken fingers, fries and a Coke he had for lunch the day before. And he was running on less than a quarter tank of gas.
Now, he's just waiting until the mid-day when he hopes it will get warmer and he could either drive home or start walking the two miles toward his house.
"This just threw everybody off, we weren't prepared for it," he said.
13 Pictures From The Insane Traffic Jam That Has Atlanta Looking ... www.businessinsider.com.au/atlanta-traffic-jam-pictures-2014-1
MP Off Grid Living/EV Page
They weren't.
1.1 Million People hit the roads at the same time in the Atlanta Metro as the snow started to fly, and roads freezing...
State of Emergency declared at 5p Local time...
Commuters and schools unprepared...
Cars/School Buses abandoned...
More tonight on Situational Preparedness on USAEBN
 |
Ryan Duckworth
|
"Cars abandoned at odd angles on side streets,
thoroughfares and major interstates. People in this car-dependent city
walked for miles, hunched over and huddled from the cold. Many had no
coats, hats or gloves.
"It was a like a scene from The Walking Dead," said Maura Neill, 38, referring to the television series about a post-apocalyptic world overtaken by zombies.
"The mistake here is that no one expected the snow to hit as quickly," said Neill, who was stranded in gridlock for 10 hours.
Neill's story is typical of the chaos that gripped the region."
"This just threw everybody off, we weren't prepared for it."
UPDATE 29.01.2014:
IT DIDN'T HAVE TO HAPPEN.
Atlanta (CNN) -- [Breaking news update at 12:32 p.m. Wednesday]
Five people have died, and 23 people have been injured because of Tuesday's wintry weather in Alabama, the state Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday.
[Breaking news update at 12:28 p.m. Wednesday]
Asked if officials should have closed roads and urged people to stay home before Tuesday's snowfall, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal said Wednesday: "If we close the city of Atlanta and our Interstate system based on maybes, then we would not be a very productive (state or city)." He said that some forecasts called for just a dusting of snow. "It's easy to make judgment calls after the fact, but I daresay there's not anybody in this room that could have (predicted the degree) of the problem that developed."
[Breaking news update at 12:06 p.m. Wednesday]
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal on Wednesday said state government will close again on Thursday because of treacherous road conditions. He asked people to stay off the roads to give crews time to clear them.
[Breaking news update at noon Wednesday]
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal said officials plan to have all children who stayed in their schools overnight because of treacherous post-snow road conditions "transported as soon as possible back to their homes." Among those still in their schools Wednesday morning, Deal said: About 2,000 in the Fulton County school system and about 400 the in the Atlanta Public Schools. National Guard troops and state police will escort buses as they drop kids home, he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/29/us/winter-weather/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/usaebn/2014/01/29/situational-preparedness
New Education Internet Radio with USA Emergency Broadcasting Network on BlogTalkRadio
 |
Corey
Smith took this photo Wednesday morning from his car, where he'd spent
the night, of motorists stranded on Interstate 285 in Georgia.(Photo: Corey Smith)
|
The usually bustling roadways in the Atlanta metropolitan area resembled a scene in a post-apocalyptic world during and after Tuesday's snow and ice storm.
Cars abandoned at odd angles on side streets, thoroughfares and major interstates. People in this car-dependent city walked for miles, hunched over and huddled from the cold. Many had no coats, hats or gloves.
"It was a like a scene from The Walking Dead," said Maura Neill, 38, referring to the television series about a post-apocalyptic world overtaken by zombies.
"The mistake here is that no one expected the snow to hit as quickly," said Neill, who was stranded in gridlock for 10 hours.
Neill's story is typical of the chaos that gripped the region.
A real estate agent, Neill had lunch with her husband Tuesday as the snow began to fall. She left him at his job at 12:05, anticipating a 20 minute drive to her home from midtown Atlanta to the suburb of Johns Creek.
But after 45 minutes of getting nowhere on Interstate 75, she got off the highway and took a side road. And that's where she got stuck – for almost 7 hours. At one point, she stopped at a Target to use the bathroom and stretch her legs. It was a ghost town inside, she said.
She kept a running log of her progress on Facebook under the hashtag, Atlantarctica. By 7:30, she wrote, "I'm about to give up and find someone nearby with a spare room."
Friends in the nearby town of Dunwoody told her they had spare rooms. But she had to get to them first. And she was running out of gas. She waited 20 minutes at a station, only to have them run out of fuel when she was next in line.
"I was running on fumes," she said. She was three-quarters of a mile away from her friends' home when she ran into a police roadblock. The hill was closed because it was a sheet of ice.
So she left the car parked in a subdivision and walked. Neill was driving a rental, a Hyundai Sonata, because her SUV had been rear-ended. That meant she didn't have the usual supplies she kept in her vehicle, duck boots, blankets, water.
Instead, she was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater and "not very warm, but very cute" boots. She had no coat or other winter gear. She took off, walking on lawns because the road was too icy.
 |
| Abandoned vehicles line I-285 in Dunwoody, Ga.(Photo: Branden Camp, AP) |
Her friends met her part way. The couple had directed traffic for two hours, trying to get people home, she said. They also took in a 24-year-old girl who had been stranded in her car during the storm.
Neill's husband, meanwhile, was still stuck in his office Wednesday morning.
"People up north, they deal with it, but what people may not understand is that we don't have the infrastructure to deal with this," she said. "There are people here who have never lived through snow and ice."
 |
| Vehicles are abandoned on the Southbound Connector in Atlanta.(Photo: Ben Gray, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via AP) |
Corey Smith, 23, was still in his compact Chevy Aveo at 10 a.m., right where he'd spent the last 11 hours on Interstate 285.
He'd left work at 5 p.m when his job as a beauty adviser at a local mall sent people home. And he ran straight into a traffic jam. He'd taken side roads, but when his car couldn't make it up a hill, he decided to get on the highway. He said cars were moving, slowly, but steadily, until 11 p.m. And then, he said, they just stopped.
Motorists started abandoning cars, trucks, school buses -- or like him, they slept in their cars, he said. He wasn't as prepared as he would have hoped. He was wearing a suit, but had no coat, hat or gloves. That's what kept him from walking in the cold.
He had no food or water, save for the chicken fingers, fries and a Coke he had for lunch the day before. And he was running on less than a quarter tank of gas.
Now, he's just waiting until the mid-day when he hopes it will get warmer and he could either drive home or start walking the two miles toward his house.
"This just threw everybody off, we weren't prepared for it," he said.
Actual Scene from 'The Walking Dead' - Photo: AMC
*Actual Shameless plug for #Nissan - for our #LEAF fans on MP BLOG*
*Actual Shameless plug for #Nissan - for our #LEAF fans on MP BLOG*
Winter needs a Hero. #SnowZombies - #WinterWarrior from nissan.ca
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Raw Story - 1 hour ago
Atlanta interstate bears uncanny resemblance to scene from - Twitchy - twitchy.com/.../atlanta-interstate-bears-uncanny-resemblance-to-scene-fr...1 hour ago - The bottom photo depicts Rick Grimes riding into Atlanta near the ... Moonwalker_90 Lookin like the walking dead RT“@bucknut_oliger: ...
13 Pictures From The Insane Traffic Jam That Has Atlanta Looking ... www.businessinsider.com.au/atlanta-traffic-jam-pictures-2014-1
16 hours ago - 13 Pictures From The Insane Traffic Jam That Has Atlanta Looking Like 'The Walking Dead' ... The scene resembles the giant traffic jam depicted on “The Walking ... Atlanta's mayor has told people to stay off the icy roads, but ...
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