You all know by now that the Dirty has been in snow and ice since Sunday night. What started out as beautiful has turned in to an inconvenience for some, a nuisance for others and tragedy for a few. May God be with those who lost love ones to the storm.
Today is day three of Atlanta Snow 2011. Schools are still closed, SOME but not all county governments have been closed and those that are open are operating with skeleton crews. As for me and my house (which would be me only) I decided to venture to work today, albeit late waiting for the sun to come up and cast some light on the slick spots. In Gwinnett County we have more than a few slick spots. We have entire blocks of some state maintained and county maintained roads COVERED in ice. There have been no plows, no salt and no sand in the Norcross/Lilburn area of Gwinnett in which I live and I am MAD about it. Roads that are passable are a result of folks driving, not any plows with salt and sand to the rescue.
After the frustration of being turned back on Singleton Road by a police roadblock, slip/sliding down Indian Trail to US 29, and watching people struggle to get up a small hill on U.S. 29, my vehicle and me headed home and started working the phones.
First was the office of Gwinnett County Commissioner District 1 Shirley Lassister. I did not speak with her (of course) but did speak to her assistant Debbie who was very kind and started explaining which agency maintains which roads in the area. Kudos to Debbie, because I was GOING OFF! She completely understood my frustration, I apologized, we had a laugh and she directed me to Gwinnett County DOT (770-822-7417). Amanda received this call and promptly let me know that US 378 and US 29 are maintained by the GA DOT but Singleton Rd. is maintained by the county and it is on the plough/salt/sand list. She directed me to GA DOT (770-339-2308). The answers I got on this call made me SMDH.
I don't catch the lady's name however she informed me that 29 was passable (I told her barely and that people were skidding and turning around). She said that 29 was on the list to be cleared however some of the trucks were BROKEN DOWN and that there were only TWO TRUCKS available for the area. There are 800,000 folks in the county and from what I've seen in news coverage, the only areas I've seen cleared (barely) is I-85. What are we supposed to do out here?
I've been here 20 years. This is the south, it does not snow (often) but when it does we shut down (for a day or so) and it's business as usual. This time however DOT, the State of GA, and the municipalities of the Atlanta metro are got caught with their collective pants down. Citizens understand that it is not cost effective to have snow ready equipment on hand, nor manpower. Citizens understand that clean-up takes time. What citizens don't understand is a lack of planning, a lack of a plan. What we got was piecemeal. The state was prepared to address power outages calling in power companies from neighboring states to restore power in the even of massive outages. That was a good move. My question is would it be possible to get trucks from Eastern Seaboard or Midwestern states? Is it possible to get some sort of interstate agreements in place that would address weather emergencies like snow and ice?
If you're a politico, work for a governmental agency or are otherwise in the know on these types of agreements, please weigh-in in the comments with discussion, links and resources.
We don't want to be caught with our pants down anymore, nor do we want to be STUCK LIKE CHUCK.
To see local coverage of Snow Atlanta go to WSBTV 2, Fox 5 Atlanta or CBS Atlanta 46.
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