The whole country is talking about the Atlanta Ice Down, and I know you've all heard the stories of people being stuck in traffic for 11 hours. The way the story is being told, it must sound like those of us in the Southeast have no idea what to do when a few snowflakes start coming down.
But the main national stories didn’t tell the whole story about what happened.
The problem was not that two or three inches of snow fell. Believe it or not, southerners can handle driving in two or three inches of snow. The problem was that, as the snow fell, it was melting upon hitting the ground and then freezing. Throughout the day, that was turning road surfaces into ice rinks.
Now this is where some better preparation on the part of state and local officials would have helped. During yesterday's press conference, the director of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency declared to the press that things hadn't gotten all that bad by 2 p.m. A reporter turned to Gov. Nathan Deal and asked him if he agreed with that. He said emphatically that he did not.
So various state officials were not even on the same page. I understand the situation was fluid and developing quickly, but this is clearly part of the problem.
At the same time, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed acknowledged he made a mistake by not calling for staggering the times when people would leave - resulting in a mass exodus right around the time when things were getting to their worst point. Give Reed credit for manning up. At least he didn't blame a YouTube video!
Now, should the governor and the mayor and the GEMA director have anticipated this? I think so. It was the ice that caused the problem, and when you have a dropping temperature and it hits the ground and melts, you get ice underneath. It was the mass exodus that really caused the problem, as people hit the highways and the byways at the same time that stuff was starting to freeze. Therein lied the problem.
But there was some good news that came out of this, and probably the best news was that even though there was a terrible storm, there are some really good people in this world. And one of the examples is what happened with a couple that was on their way to the hospital and got stuck in the storm, as a police officer stopped by the check and see what was happening.
They were having a baby.
And so right there, on the side of the road in the middle of the storm, the expectant father and the officer delivered a newborn baby. It even turned out it was the officer's birthday! Some present, huh?
Over near Birmingham, Chick-Fil-A restaurants opened up to give people food, not sell people food, and Home Depot opened up to allow people to sleep inside because their cars were abandoned. Some people even opened up their homes. You take a risk doing that, but people’s hearts were bigger than their fears.
Hopefully Atlanta and state officials will learn from this and be better prepared the next time this happens, but every time a troublesome situation like this occurs, we can also take solace in the fact that it brings out the best in many people. That was surely true in the case of the Atlanta Ice Down.
