6am Wednesday - January 29th
Imagine sitting in your car for 18 plus hours on the highway! This is Atlanta- we are not equipped to handle even 2 inches of snow. The snow started yesterday- Tuesday, Jan.28th- at about 10:30am. People started to leave work around 12:30 pm. Tracker trailers slid across several lanes of traffic. Many other fender benders occurred and you have- snow jam 2014!
I have a friend that teaches at North Atlanta High. He called me at 4pm Tuesday and said-guess where I am? I thought he was stuck on the highway- but no. The teachers were not allowed to leave the school, because the buses couldn't get to the school to take the students home. So now it is 6am in the morning and they all had to spend the night at the school!
My family lives up north. I know that after they get a snowfall of 15 inches, they still go to work the next morning. They have no comprehension of this situation. My niece was here for Snowmegeddon 2011. The city was closed down for a week. We picked her up at her hotel downtown and went out to eat on a Sunday night. While we were out, it started to snow. We tried to get home and got stuck on a hill about a mile from our house. we parked the car on the side of the road and walked home. The next morning I walked her back to the MARTA train station and she was able to get back to her hotel. One of my former students was walking her dog down Lenox Rd. and she and her boyfriend helped me get my car up the hill and I was able to park it in a flat parking lot across the street from where I live. It stayed there for the next 5 days!
People make fun of us here in the south. We don't know how to drive in the snow. We close schools when there is a threat of snow. The truth is: We do not have the equipment to handle a regular commute home in the snow. The school officials made a gamble yesterday and they lost. The last several years, when we have had snow it has been at night or over a weekend and they have forgotten the mess they had in 1982 when everyone had to park on the highway and walk to a friend's house, restaurant or hotel. That year my sister and I drove from NJ back to college here in Atlanta through the snow and ice. That was truly the worst driving I have ever experienced.
Look- those of you in charge of schools and businesses- when the weather men are predicting snow in the middle of the work or school day- just call it off! Yes- we as a city will be wrong sometimes, and we may look like little wussies, but it is better to be safe than to be stuck in your car on the highway or to have students stuck at school without their parents or even worse to have a bus full of students that are stuck on the highway for 16 hours. What a nightmare! I hope that the school officials will give their teachers a comp day for their noble efforts to take care of their students overnight!
