Three major interstate highways converge in ATL 75 85 and 20. Have a look at the number of 18 wheelers in those jams.
Posted on 01/30/2014 7:10:34 AM PST by nikos1121
Still littered with abandoned cars, Atlanta struggled to find its way back to normal Thursday while the mayor and governor struggled with the political fallout from a snowstorm that trapped some people in their cars more than 24 hours.
Mayor Kasim Reed assured people on Tuesday, in a message on Twitter before the snow began to fall: “Atlanta, we are ready for the snow.”
On Thursday, he acknowledged that authorities made a mistake by not staggering their orders for people to go home — schools first, then private businesses, then government employees. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the interstates at the same time.
But Reed suggested, in a pair of interviews on NBC’s TODAY and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” that he was being unfairly blamed for traffic that clogged highways outside the city limits.
“I think we need to work much harder on coordination,” he said on MSNBC. But he stressed: “The highways are not the responsibility of the city.”
It was the latest episode of finger-pointing after the storm. On Wednesday, Gov. Nathan Deal infuriated meteorologists by calling the storm “unexpected” and saying that nobody “could have predicted “the degree and magnitude of the problem.”
In fact, the National Weather Service issued a winter storm alert for Atlanta at 3:38 a.m. on Tuesday, 12 hours before the worst of the traffic set in.
I get so sick of that attitude from people who.have no clue about the roads down here. The asphalt has a higher amount of tar to deal with thhe high temps through the summer. On top of that, 90%of the time we getwe usually get rain that freezes u.derneath the snow. I don’t care who you are, driving in a sheet of ice is treacherous.
Reed was just reelected by a wide margin.
Out of curiosity, if the mayor or the governor at your location told you this is when you have to come home from work, would you have followed their orders???
Atlantans had a choice. They all could have stayed home from work on Tuesday to avoid what happened. Those that went to work (for whatever reason) chose to take their chances. The storm was supposed to hit later, it was supposed to hit further south, it was supposed to have less snow and less ice build up. Sometimes that happens with weather.... can’t always be perfect in the predictions.
As to National Weather Service, their projections had major portion of storm south of Atlanta and hitting around 2 pm. Not only did major portion of storm hit Atlanta northward but it started in the north at 10am. No one I know has a way back machine. There are 40 snow plows for the STATE of Georgia. Chicago probably has more than that for the south side.
Since then, the problem with our biennial (yet, according to the media, 'rare') winter storms is sheets of smooth ice covering the roadways of a metro area within an hour or two, as was the problem this time.
Atlanta is not equipped to address that, although it's a frequent occurrence.
trucks with spreaders loaded with salt and sand...which is stored in many locations under a pavilion style roof to keep the rain from washing it away and the trucks are loaded when needed...if it happens every few years it is enough to set up the infrastructure...
see 24
Predicting what a winter storm will do in the south is one of the biggest guessing jobs in the weather business. Conditions have to be perfect for it to snow down here, and conditions change by the minute. They were predicting just where this storm would go for almost a week, and I knew that they could not possibly know what it would do or where it would go, especially when they said it would go further south than usual. Nobody was predicting ice and snow in Atlanta or Birmingham, and nothing was supposed to happen until later in the day. Blame the weather forecasters for this one.
This happened in Boston a few years back. Mayor closed the city and told private companies to send their employees home at 2PM. Schools and government were closed at same time. Massive gridlock. I was caught up in that and it took me until 10pm at night to get home. All it takes is a few accidents and spinouts in that situation and nothing will move for hours.
The salt trucks were all staged in middle and south Georgia where the weather forecasters predicted it would snow.
A Lot of blame to go around here... but I will just say for the record, Southern Drivers are absolute IDIOTS!!!
growing up in Wyo snow and ice are a part of life... but here in Atl... I see things i never thought I would see!!
spent the night on CCP never saw ONE sand/salt truck and took 12 hours to clear one wreck that was blocking the entire road... cops came, and left dint do jack!!!
Pathetic for no more snow and ice that was on the ground!!
They did...Winter Storm 'Leon'.
Is the Mayor ashamed of his first name? Muhammad?
Governor Deal was the target, Kasim Reed was just collateral damage.
Three major interstate highways converge in ATL 75 85 and 20. Have a look at the number of 18 wheelers in those jams.
Thanks for the help.
Well, at least their consistant with their manufactured crises.
“Mayor Kasim Reed assured people on Tuesday, in a message on Twitter”
On twitter? really? What about people who dont buy into social media? Good Lord whats wrong with TV?
Lemme tell you...N.O. did it RIGHT this time. We didn’t believe it would actually happen, but there was ice everywhere. You have to be MONUMENTALLY incompetent to make New Orleans politicians look GOOD handling a crisis! Otherwise, the excuses sound about the same. Here, Nagin is on trial for what he didn’t do during Katrina, and how he profited while in office-ironic timing! Will Atlanta’s mayor be held accountable for this? Unless there were deaths, I doubt it. Lawsuits, however, should begin NOW!
AND radio.
Amen to that...
No he isn't. He's on trial for numerous counts of political corruption. Katrina has nothing to do with it.
You didn't believe it would ice in NOLA? I did. It arrived a bit later than expected, and wasn't as thick as predicted, but was enough to make driving hazardous in a region critically dependent on major bridges and elevated expressways. I could have got to my office on Tuesday, and maybe even home again, but it wasn't worth the risk.
There are many factors to this. First the ‘choice’you mentioned to stay home or not. While the officials say STAY OFF the roads except for emergencies, employers are saying REPORT TO WORK. If your job is on the line-you go. Second-you can’t keep kids home if you have to go to work, so you send the kids to schools if they’re open( trusting the government for safety). Kids off school mean arranging childcare-not always possible-so everyone wants the regular routine to go on, they play the odds.
Also- there is the ‘Sky is Falling’ syndrome. False alarms numb people to the threat of danger. Relatives in Atlanta told me that they’ve been hearing ‘snow’ for weeks, and nothing happens-so they didn’t believe this. Atlanta is also a huge city- gridlock is a daily thing. Put all of that together with the fact that weather has become over dramatized of late( naming winter...really?) and there’s a real disconnect between real life and weather/disasters/warnings.
I saw it here in the N.O.area. Officials saying STAY HOME , employers saying come to work. Since schools were closed ahead of time, that made some stay home-but not all. And people were actually complaining that stores were closed, they wanted to shop in an ice storm. They were in Sams Club( which didn’t close till almost dark!) with newborns and children. When the store finally closed, everything was iced over and it was getting dark, and people were STILL driving up, incensed that they couldn’t shop!
If those stores in Atlanta hadn’t been open, where would the stranded people have sheltered?
And WHY-once it happened and people were stranded on the Interstate- weren’t helicopters called in to lift people down to ground level? In 18 hours??? Every surrounding city could have sent police copters, National Guard,military help-a helluva lot sooner! Ice a factor flying- how about fire trucks with extended ladders to allow people to climb down from Interstates? Instead, we got stupefied inaction!
Atlanta isn’t a city surrounded by a swamp, like N.O. it has major metropolitan areas all around to help. Why did it take so long? We got tsunami help to Indonesia faster! A major American city paralyzed by winter weather is ludicrous. There was an overabundance of stupidity and incompetence involved in this.
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