A rare ice storm turned Atlanta into a slippery mess on Wednesday, after stranding thousands for hours on frozen roadways and raising questions about how city leaders prepared for and handled the cold snap that slammed the US South.
The storm, which has killed at least seven people, on Tuesday swept over a region of about 60 million largely unaccustomed to ice and snow — stretching from Texas through Georgia and into the Carolinas — and forecasts called for more freezing weather yesterday.
Georgia officials on Wednesday said that the real progress in cleaning up the region would not come until after the icy roads begin to thaw.
Photo: AP / Atlanta Journal-Constitution / John Spink
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed came under fire for his response to a storm that trapped hundreds of children in schools overnight, some without provisions, and created traffic jams stretching for kilometers on roads coated with 5cm of snow.
“Folks are angry with the mayor of Atlanta, with the governor,” said Flavia DiCesare, 54, who spent the night in her office at Cox Enterprises in Atlanta, about 48km from home.
The mayor said schools, businesses and government offices were partly to blame for sending all the workers home just as the storm was rolling in.
Photo: Reuters
“During the day, we have a million to 1.2 million people in this city and all those people were out in very bad weather. It hampered our ability to get our equipment on the ground and to prepare our roads for that,” Reed told a news conference.
“The error — and we have shared responsibility for the error — the error was letting everybody out at once,” he said.
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal said all of Atlanta’s school children had been safely returned to their families by Wednesday evening, with help from the National Guard and State Patrol.
Deal had earlier angered many — including local meteorologists — when he described the storm late on Tuesday as “unexpected.”
The comments prompted a sharp reaction from many residents — and meteorologists.
In a blog published on Wednesday, American Meteorological Society president J. Marshall Shepherd defended local weather forecasters, declaring “the Atlanta forecast was very good.”
The one-day snowfall of 6.6cm ranked as the 20th-heaviest in Atlanta, according to the National Weather Service.
The city’s highways became parking lots and thousands of motorists, still stuck 24 hours after the storm hit, were seeking help and food. Workers who could not get home were setting up makeshift accommodations in stores and offices.
The roads, littered with stranded cars, looked like a scene from the television show Walking Dead, said DiCesare, who spent the night in her office with about 100 other employees.
“It looks like zombies walking on the side of these roads,” she said.
Predicted or not, Wednesday’s sudden cold snap stunned the city.
“We’re in complete gridlock down here,” said Steve Rose, a police captain in Sandy Springs, Georgia, during Tuesday evening’s rush hour. “It’s kind of embarrassing, but we got 3 inches of snow and we’re screwed.”
About 800 traffic accidents were reported in the city, but there were no serious injuries, officials said.
At least five deaths in Alabama and two in Georgia were blamed on the weather.
The storm took a toll on air travel across the region, with more than 2,600 flights canceled and hundreds of others delayed, according to flight tracking Web site FlightAware.com.
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