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.
oh I don’t disagree with your observations. The truth is that the only way employers change their attitudes about the safety of their workers is when our behavior says it is the most important thing. Frankly I would tell an employer to go ahead and fire me if they don’t trust my judgement. I would be willing to face whatever those consequences are. I have been told many times in the past “if you don’t do ——— (fill in the blank with whatever you want to) THEN you will be fired.” A few times when I was young and unobservant I did what I was told or else. Then I realized that my employer needed my skills as much as I needed a job. I took to saying fine go ahead and fire me then. They never did. What I learned from that was two things 1) work hard when I am at work and go the extra mile when I can 2) no job is worth my sanity or my safety.
I note that you live in NO. Seems to me people refused to leave their homes during Katrina causing all sorts of havoc for emergency personnel. People went to work also not believing any warnings. It is my understanding that while the storm was not as bad as it could have been the levi breaks caused massive flooding and major problems for the city.
There are not necessarily one size fits all answers which is why it is all the more important for individuals to act in an informed and responsible manner