Posted on 01/29/2014 10:28:10 AM PST by ealgeone
What can we learn from the snowstorm that has hit the south?
I'm watching and reading responses to the snowstorm in the ATL and its utterly amazing the reaction of the media and the sheeple.
1) government resources become overwhelmed quickly 2) you cannot quickly evacuate a major urban area 3) the media will quickly move to place blame to keep the narrative going 4) if traveling by car have appropriate provisions on hand 5) YOU are ultimately responsible for yourself
6) Government employees do not know how to read a weather forecast. Prepare accordingly.
Yes - and the further the responsibility is away from local government, the worse the response
People in the south need to stay home in these situations. If it doesn’t happen more than once every decade or so its worth the lost revenue for a day.
I was feeling sorry for them at first because they really don’t know how to deal with snow. Now, it’s getting downright funny.
I second that. Leave winter to Us professionals up north.
CC
I second that. Leave winter to Us professionals up north.
CC
“YOU are ultimately responsible for yourself”
No offense to our Southern brothers and sisters, who I hope are coping as best they can, but this is one reason many of us appreciate the rigors of a four-season climate. We are tested every winter, and we know that consequences of not being prepared and heads-up can be life-threatening. It’s like anything else, the more you practice, the better you get at a thing, and here in the midwest, we practice once a year!
I’ve watched this mess for hours and hours. My biggest take away from all this besides late action by powers that be is that all these cars on the interstates are being blocked or hindered by semis that get stuck and cross-laned.
I think that next time, the surrounding Atlanta county police on every one of the interstates should FORCE all semis to the side of the road there for 12 hours or so. This would have allowed more cars to get home.
My 2 cents.
I can deal with the snow, ice and even the cold but this wind is getting old.
The wind is supposed to stop later tonight.. Just before the snow starts.
CC
LOL! That picture reminds me of the Frasier ice fishing episode where they drop the car keys into the lake.
Standard rule I learned in Alaska back in 1968. If driving, keep TWO cans of STERNO in the car, matches, and a sterno stove. Blankets, hard candy and other dry food, Add a good sleeping bag.
If the semis hadn’t closed the road, the death toll would have been enormous. I doubt many of the commuters had Blizzaks, they would have slid and left the roads just as the trucks did, but there would have been more crashes given the extra space. People in the northern climes with poor equipment leave the road in icy conditions, some of them with experience driving in the conditions.
I always have chains in my car, but have never used them. If the state says chains are mandatory I figure it is code for "smart people stay home."
Furthermore, when the weather got particularly nasty, we just stayed home. I see some "back in my day" posters in these threads yapping about how school never closed and they had to walk six miles blah, blah, blah.
There were more "snow days" when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. People stayed home from work too unless they had a critical job function like working in a hospital or being a police officer. If they had a typical office job, they stayed home and they didn't have to wait for their boss to call them. It was a common sense thing.
I think technology has worked against us in some ways. People now see nothing wrong with going to school in flip-flops or to work with just a light jacket and no gloves or hat on a sub-zero day. If they get in a jam, they only have to make a cellphone call and help is on the way. We are too complacent and we assume that we can now disregard all weather conditions because we'll never be in danger.
I'm a seasoned New England driver and our roads can handle a few inches of snow - it's routine. But I was on a business trip in Nashville, TN once when it snowed and I knew better to just stay in the hotel because I know the chaos that would result down there with just an inch or two of snow. Sure enough, one of my co-workers who was also down there insisted on taking his rental car out and promptly got in a fender bender and was stuck out on I-40 for hours. Never made it to the branch office.
People in the Deep South should just stay home when it snows. In almost all cases, it will be melted within 24 hours. Not worth the risk to be out there endangering yourself and others.
Exactly! They talk about "professional drivers", blah, blah. but that may accurately describe only a small portion of current big truck drivers.
There were several tv shots from traffic copters showing 18 wheelers blocking all of the lanes on major freeways. There well may have been emergencies in passenger autos stacked up behind them trying to get by.
In my opinion, one of the top recommendations out of this current mess in Atlanta ought to be that big rig drivers who even travel in the last open lane of a traffic jam, let along block it, ought to immediately lose their license.
My son spent a couple of hours going a few miles in the mess on the surface streets in the 400N/285 area before returning to his office for the night (he had two female co-workers with him and he knew there was food and warmth there). He said watching the panicked actions of some of the ordinary drivers (ignoring functioning street lights, driving on the wrong side of the road for no reason, etc.) was a bit like watching civilization disintegrate. The last thing we need is big rig drivers balling it up even worse.
To all you Northerners who think this is “funny,” this just reminds me how happy I am that God led me to the South where people still feel empathy for one another. There were 25,000 school children stuck in buses, mothers with babies and elderly people without water or medicine stuck on the side of the freeway overnight. You think that is funny? I spent years living way north of Colorado, and I guarantee you that if the northern states didn’t use sand, gravel, salt and snowplows you would all be sliding around too.
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