Reed was just reelected by a wide margin.
Out of curiosity, if the mayor or the governor at your location told you this is when you have to come home from work, would you have followed their orders???
Atlantans had a choice. They all could have stayed home from work on Tuesday to avoid what happened. Those that went to work (for whatever reason) chose to take their chances. The storm was supposed to hit later, it was supposed to hit further south, it was supposed to have less snow and less ice build up. Sometimes that happens with weather.... can’t always be perfect in the predictions.
As to National Weather Service, their projections had major portion of storm south of Atlanta and hitting around 2 pm. Not only did major portion of storm hit Atlanta northward but it started in the north at 10am. No one I know has a way back machine. There are 40 snow plows for the STATE of Georgia. Chicago probably has more than that for the south side.
There are many factors to this. First the ‘choice’you mentioned to stay home or not. While the officials say STAY OFF the roads except for emergencies, employers are saying REPORT TO WORK. If your job is on the line-you go. Second-you can’t keep kids home if you have to go to work, so you send the kids to schools if they’re open( trusting the government for safety). Kids off school mean arranging childcare-not always possible-so everyone wants the regular routine to go on, they play the odds.
Also- there is the ‘Sky is Falling’ syndrome. False alarms numb people to the threat of danger. Relatives in Atlanta told me that they’ve been hearing ‘snow’ for weeks, and nothing happens-so they didn’t believe this. Atlanta is also a huge city- gridlock is a daily thing. Put all of that together with the fact that weather has become over dramatized of late( naming winter...really?) and there’s a real disconnect between real life and weather/disasters/warnings.
I saw it here in the N.O.area. Officials saying STAY HOME , employers saying come to work. Since schools were closed ahead of time, that made some stay home-but not all. And people were actually complaining that stores were closed, they wanted to shop in an ice storm. They were in Sams Club( which didn’t close till almost dark!) with newborns and children. When the store finally closed, everything was iced over and it was getting dark, and people were STILL driving up, incensed that they couldn’t shop!
If those stores in Atlanta hadn’t been open, where would the stranded people have sheltered?
And WHY-once it happened and people were stranded on the Interstate- weren’t helicopters called in to lift people down to ground level? In 18 hours??? Every surrounding city could have sent police copters, National Guard,military help-a helluva lot sooner! Ice a factor flying- how about fire trucks with extended ladders to allow people to climb down from Interstates? Instead, we got stupefied inaction!
Atlanta isn’t a city surrounded by a swamp, like N.O. it has major metropolitan areas all around to help. Why did it take so long? We got tsunami help to Indonesia faster! A major American city paralyzed by winter weather is ludicrous. There was an overabundance of stupidity and incompetence involved in this.