Posted on 01/28/2014 8:00:26 PM PST by Pan_Yan
Slippery, snowy roads left students stranded in school late Tuesday night as parents waded through paralyzing traffic and buses struggled to arrive, hours after school was dismissed early.
Some schools and their employees braced for the possibility that students might have to sleep at school overnight if no one could reach them on slick roads.
“We definitely might be pulling an all-nighter here,” said Thomas Algarin, spokesman for Marietta City Schools.
“We have been trying to transport students all afternoon, into evening and up to about 30 minutes ago, Cobb school spokesman Jay Dillon said in an e-mail send to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at 9:36 p.m. Tuesday. “At this point, the roads have deteriorated to the point that there is no use in further attempting to deliver students home. All buses have either returned their remaining students to school, or will be there shortly. That’s only a relative handful of buses. We dismissed two hours early and were able to safely transport the vast majority of elementary students, and most high school students.
,,,
At North Atlanta High School, students were still waiting for buses at nearly 10 p.m., according to Atlanta schools spokeswoman Kimberly Willis Green. According to the school district’s Twitter feed, food was on the way. Frustrated parents said school officials had been promising to feed students for hours.
Roads were in such bad shape that Marietta City Schools and Cherokee and Bartow counties north of Kennesaw suspended school bus service, asking students to remain at school until parents could pick them up.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
Dang that man made global warming.
Well, Cumberland County NC put out the notice yesterday that schools would be closed today and tomorrow.
At the time the weather report called for it to start with light snow around 11:00AM. The weather ban did some wiggling overnight and it just started sleeting around 5:00PM.
They could have had school today - but they like to play it safe due to all the crazy drivers around here.
Yes, I am glad Al Gore invented the internet, so that we might rant against the evils of Global Warming!
Hence the need to plan ahead. It’s like any other storm...it can change in a moment. You need to be ready.
Oh, and another screw up by guvment schools.
My wife had to drive home in that mess. 11 mile trip took over 7 hours, about 1.5 MPH average. Hope you are safely tucked away for the duration!
I would find a way to get my kids at all costs.
This I don't understand. Do their tires not have treads? Here we have school busses delivering students into the Cascade Mountain foothills through ice, snow, mud, running water and whatever else a typical winter might bring. They never get stuck.
Dear Parents:
“WTF did you expect? This area isn’t prepared to deal with any amount of snow.
It doesn’t happen enough to justify the expense.
Your kids were safe, warm, had drinking water and access to bathrooms”
It took me almost 7 hours (34 miles) but I had to drop someone off who normally rides the bus. He would have been stranded at the train station. I used 90 pounds of ice melt getting cars out of my way so I could get home, and that included a police cruiser.
I saw some amazing things in the drive.
I live in the one county in the area smart enough to leave the kids at home. Apparently mine went through almost every board game in the house today.
Reminds me of a Little House on the Prairie episode.
Our county let them out early enough to get home. I am very thankful.
Perfect storm. It was about 30 degrees when it started snowing. That meant the pavement was warm enough to melt the snow ... for a while. Once the snow got heavy everything turned into an ice rink. Then all of a sudden at about 2 pm a million people in the same city decide they need to relocate RIGHT NOW. No snow tires. Little experience with ice. Once everyone gridlocked the city the road crews and sand trucks were stuck as well.
Predicting what a snowstorm in the south will do is hard enough, but this one threw a lot of people for a loop. It was supposed to take a narrow track through south Alabama and Georgia, but it covered a larger area to the north. Lots of places weren’t prepared because they didn’t expect to get hit. Nobody was expecting it to start out as an ice storm where I live, and that made things much worse.
Makes for an interesting SHTF consideration.
Left Newnan at noon. Got to my house at 8 pm.
Amen bro, amen. ;-)
Were there no warnings of snow for Birmingham, Atlanta, etc.??? There were warnings for areas south of those places. Those schools cancelled classes for today and tomorrow. But places with millions of people were too stupid to cancel? Did the National Weather Service botch this??? If George W. were POTUS, then he would be blamed for not warning the poor folks in those areas. So the current occupant needs to take full blame for this one. And his administration. This is a HUGE mess.
I was laughing today as I read posts by my friends in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Atlanta. At 10am, Tuscaloosa schools decided they would dismiss students early. HS at noon. MS at noon thirty. Elementary at 1pm. At 11am, emergency management asked everyone to stay off the roads. Uh huh. Birmingham is a city of hills. They had school today. I have friends whose children are spending the night at schools. And the friends did not make it home either. I have friends in Atlanta where a dad is in a hotel, a mom is home alone, children are at various locations with friends, another mom spent hours and hours driving to pick up a toddler and then home. It is crazy. I would be furious with myself if I had sent my children to school today. I would be furious if the weather report were so inaccurate. But was it? That is what I want to know. I was only paying attention to ours.
The good news is that it will be warm on the weekend. :)
I certainly does. I drove in the median for about a mile to where the police had closed the road. There were about 100 cars waiting in line, unable to decide whether to turn left, turn right or turn around. So they just sat there. It was like watching a bizarre episode of The Walking Dead. I wove my way past them, turned left and went home. No one followed.
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