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AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2007 > February > 02
Friday, February 2, 2007
Winter Fest: Car Wrecks & Falling Trees
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta is a good place to live if you like the warm climate and traffic. Ten months out of the year you can get by with a light jacket or sweater at the most. It is the other two months that we’ve not figured out how to handle. Quite frankly, we just don’t listen to good advice.
I guess ice and the occasional snow have been hitting the ground every January and February for centuries but it has only been 30 years or so that we have really been able to focus on upcoming ice storms.
For those of you not from Atlanta, which is all of you in Atlanta, how long you’ve been here determines how much you enjoyed our annual tradition called Solemnitas of Car Pessum do Quod Cado Tabesco Nemus” which in Latin means “Festival of Car Wrecks and Falling Pine Trees.”
The ice event would probably pass without too much conversation if it were not for extensive local television coverage painstakingly focusing on all aspects of the coming weather. They can show us on three or four different satellite maps exactly where the storm is coming from and when it will hit. Then, as if we don’t believe them, they’ll show us video from the last ice storm. You can see cars sliding sideways and then hitting a telephone pole spilling milk and bread all over the road.
It only takes a few seconds to see that we’re not really set up to drive on ice. My theory is that it’s too slick.
Atlanta has few, if any snow plows. We don’t budget for snow plows but we do budget for sand trucks. TV stations send reporters to the sand place to show us how the trucks will load the sand and then spread it. Another reporter is standing next to the highway looking for ice. If he or she finds ice, they scoop some of it up so we can clearly see that it’s ice.
Panic sets in as thousands realize they’re low on milk and bread.
At this point in the broadcast, some really good advice is given by the spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety. The message is simple: “Please don’t drive unless you absolutely have to.”
Thousands immediately enter the roadway.
Hopefully, if you didn’t listen to the advice, you at least made it home in one piece to enjoy some home cooked milk and bread.
