Sunnie Carmichael learned she had a real friend in one of her co-workers when she and more than 2,000 other motorists got stranded Tuesday night on interstates and roads.
The 29-year-old Austell woman got stuck near Langford Parkway and I-285 when trying to get home from work at Atlanta Medical Center and finally called Robyn Hooker, a fellow registered nurse.
Her co-worker got up before dawn Wednesday and hiked more than five miles to Carmichael’s rescue. The two then walked backed to Hooker’s house off Camp Creek Parkway to camp out until the roads were passable again.
“I’m lucky she came in and got me,” Carmichael said.
On Thursday they were trying to find Carmichael’s car. They soon figured out it must have been towed and they headed to the West Lake MARTA station where the Georgia National Guard were ferrying drivers back to their vehicles still on the road and state troopers were running down what towing companies had impounded others.
“I’m just glad I’m safe,” said Carmichael, who was stuck in her vehicle more than 15 hours. “If I can’t find the car, I can’t find it.”
Ensie “Coach” Longino spent a fretful night at home after his wife, Dulcy, got stranded near Bolton Road and I-285, trying to make it home Tuesday from her office in Marietta to her home on Thornton Road near Six Flags.
Coach Longino— who specializes in Little League baseball — blamed bad preparation by Gov. Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed for not rescuing the stranded sooner who were confronted with freezing temperatures.
“You can’t blame the meteorologists— they told you it was coming,” the 53-year-old Longino said. “I think Gov. Deal and Mayor Reed assumed the storm would hit further south and we would just get a little sheet out of this. You know what they say when you ‘assume.’”
“The biggest thing that got to me is that all these people were out there and nobody seemed to care. They don’t have any food and you have all these women who have to go to the restroom.”
Dulcy, said she was on the phone much of the Tuesday night telling her family to hold off rescuing her because the occasional movement in the deadlocked traffic made her think she would eventually get home.
“I kept telling myself that it was going to start moving,” she said. “I never gave up until my battery light came on. Then I knew I was toast.”
Her husband and two teenage sons drove to English Park off Bolton Road Wednesday and the two boys hiked in to get their mom in record time. Dulcy said the sight of the stranded cars and semi-trucks on the hike out let her know how bad her situation had been the previous night.
Sharon Howell, 32, lost her car on I-20 trying to make it home in Douglas County from her job at a Decatur Burger King.
She said her battery died after she fell asleep with the radio playing. So she had to leave it and drove out with a fellow stranded traveler Wednesday morning. When she got back by there Thursday, she realized it had been towed.
“I was stuck in traffic for 16 hours,” she said. “Nobody got out of their cars to have any conversation. It was too cold for that.”
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