Stay home. Don’t venture out.
That message got through one very long, messy, frustrating and frightening day late, especially for the hundreds of children across metro Atlanta who spent Tuesday night snowbound at school. To say nothing of their distraught parents.
“This is dangerous,”said Fulton County parent Andrea Ferrard. “What a nightmare!”
For every flake of snow that fell Tuesday afternoon, it seemed that another motorist took to the roads, spawning an epic traffic jam that persisted long after darkness fell. Stranded for hours, drivers — many of them parents trying to pick up children abruptly released by their schools — overwhelmed phone and data networks. They sat, they fumed, and, inevitably, they looked for someone to blame.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed had several candidates. “Government, schools and business[es] closing at the same time, and releasing everybody out into the city was a mistake,” he told reporters.
While only a few inches of snow fell, cars slid off roadways into ditches; some flipping over. Some police, overwhelmed by the number of fender-benders, simply stopped, handed out accident forms, and moved on.
Gov. Nathan Deal declared a state of emergency for all 159 counties in Georgia.
Much of the collective ire was directed at school officials for their decision not to cancel classes for the day as the winter storm bore down on Georgia.
“Fulton County schools are to blame for waiting until 1:45 P.M. to close schools early,” said parent Jared Jacobson. “There are still 140 kids stuck at River Eves Elementary School in Roswell at 5:33 p.m. Six buses never showed up they did not inform parents until 3:45 p.m. that the buses did not show up.”
School officials said making the decision on opening school was a difficult decision. As of 10:18 p.m. Monday, metro Atlanta’s core counties were under a winter weather advisory, which only speaks to the possibility of weather-related inconvenience.
It wasn’t until 4:10 a.m., that advisory escalated to the a winter storm warning, which indicates a threat to life and property.
DeKalb School Superintendent Michael Thurmond said school chiefs from around metro Atlanta had conferred hours before the start of school Tuesday, but forecasters were still uncertain about how far north the snow would fall.
“The weather forecast was very iffy,” he said, adding that if they had cancelled school and it didn’t snow, people would have been angry, too.
He added, “Let’s get the last babies home safe. I don’t care about anything else.”
In the Marietta city schools, hundreds of children were stranded at all seven in elementary schools and at the middle and high schools. Those schools were not dismissed early, but the two magnet schools were. Some of those students made it home by bus; others were re-routed to the district bus depot, where they could shelter overnight.
“If it turns out that we’ve got to house the kids, they’ll be warm and they’ll be safe,” said district spokesman Thomas Algarin. “We don’t have cots or beds, but certainly we have those gym mats that are used for P.E.”
In Cobb County. “In some cases we will not be able to get students home,” spokesman Jay Dillon said. Buses returned those kids to schools, he said. “The schools are heated, have facilities and food, so students will be safe until parents are able to pick them up.”
At Keheley Elementary School in East Cobb, Principal Liz Jackson stayed behind to care for two kindergartners whose parents had been trying for hours to come and fetch them.
“We’ve done movies, we’ve done games, we’ve done snacks,” she said.
In Fulton County, school officials were traveling school-to-school Tuesday evening, counting children who remained, preparing snacks and meals for them, and planning for those who might not get home at all.
Cherokee County was in the same predicament. “We still have students being sheltered at schools,” spokeswoman Barbara Jacoby said.
Gwinnett County, which bucked the trend and did not release students early, didn’t have widespread problems, said spokeswoman Sloan Roach. All buses made their runs successfully.
Transportation officials, too, came in for a major helping of criticism for the epic traffic snarls.
At 7 p.m., Ashley Jennings dumped her car in a parking in south Cobb. She had been in traffic for three hours and liked her odds on getting home better if she walked the remaining two miles.
“I am very upset about this and it appears that no one is helping,” Jennings said. “I haven’t seen anyone shoveling or directing traffic. They knew this was coming.”
GDOT did issue a press release Monday at about 7 p.m. titled “Winter Weather Fact Sheet.” In the third paragraph, it urged Georgians “to refrain from all but absolutely necessary driving.”
Tuesday, officials, attributed the gridlock largely to the sheer number of people who failed to heed that advice. Once the traffic jam started, it prevented crews from spreading the necessary materials on trouble spots, said Karlene Barron, a spokeswoman for GDOT.
“I know people don’t want to hear this, but the fact is, if we cannot get trucks through to treat the area, you cannot treat the area,” she said. “It’s a chicken-and-egg situation where you can’t get through, you can’t treat it, and therefore you cannot move.”
Barron said that in many areas, the brine solution applied Tuesday morning to prevent icing was gone — evaporated or carried away by traffic — by the time roads started freezing. For example, a flyover at I-85 and I-285, where a tractor-trailer to jackknife, had been pre-treated.
Driving conditions remained extremely dangerous across north and central Georgia Tuesday evening. Traffic on the major interstates was starting to loosen up and flow, but some areas were still gridlocked. GDOT officials said they were hopeful that people would soon make their way home, allowing more of their trucks to treat the roads with gravel and salt.
At Hartsfield Jackson International Airport, many gates in the terminals looked were deserted due to cancelled flights, while stranded fliers whiled away the hours. “I think I’m going to be a little homeless on a bench in the airport,” said J.D. Dickinson of Charleston.
As he walked along amid the driving snow Tuesday, Jennaro Neal exclaimed to passersby, “I love this!”
Neal, who grew up in Catskill, New York, admits to enjoying watch Atlantans scramble in what his hometown would consider a light dusting. Driving is a different matter.
“For one, they need to take defensive driving classes,” Neal, 44, said. “You don’t drive right on top of people when it’s like this out.”
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