![]() ![]() Snow induces mass panic in Southern drivers We kept our people safe, and the city of Atlanta is running again.” And, as of today – one day into a severe weather event – we got our streets cleaned. “I’m responsible for the streets that are in the city of Atlanta. “But, I want to state clearly, I don’t have jurisdiction to clear interstate highways in the city of Atlanta,” he said. Wednesday night, Reed defended his storm response, noting government officials “have a shared responsibility.” The governor’s spokeswoman, Sasha Dlugounski, said Deal had been kept up-to-date on conditions and cleared his schedule after the award presentation. The offices of the governor and the mayor confirmed the men were at a luncheon in Atlanta around noon Tuesday, about the time the snowfall began.Īnne Torres, Atlanta’s deputy communications director, said Reed accepted an award from Georgia Trend magazine as 2014 Georgian of the Year. He called their performance “a failure to lead.” “I hope the governor and the mayor learn from this that they’re going to have to act before these events, not make some symbolic gesture after.” The schools and the government should have been closed Tuesday, he said. “They need to have in Atlanta the same type of government you have in New York City, where the mayor controls the city and everything around that city, and the mayor can make decisions on road closures he has emergency powers as when schools close,” he said. Russel Honore, who coordinated relief efforts along the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, did not equivocate in finding fault. Others sought shelter on lounge chairs at area Home Depots or in the aisles of 24-hour CVS stores.įormer Lt. Many of those million people who Reed says got out of the city spent the night sleeping in their cars, on the side of the road or in gas station parking lots. “No, I was out stuck in the traffic,” Costello replied. “That’s easy to say from your anchor seat,” Reed said. People got out of their cars on icy roadways in frigid conditions to walk home.” We cleared the way of all of our hospitals, all of our police stations.”Ĭostello cut in to say, “Well, I heard this from public officials before, ‘We didn’t have any fatalities,’ but that was just by the grace of God. “We got a million people out of the city,” Reed said. Reed gave the city’s response a good grade during his sometimes testy exchange with Costello. “If I had my druthers, we would have staggered the closures.” “I said immediately yesterday that releasing all of these folks was not the right way to go,” Reed told CNN’s Carol Costello on Wednesday. When the snow started, he said, schools and businesses released people simultaneously, inundating the roads with more vehicles than there was pavement. ![]() Knowing what was coming, I can’t believe they didn’t have the kids out of school and there wasn’t a better plan on the roads.”Ītlanta Mayor Kasim Reed laid part of the blame on local businesses, saying they contributed to the gridlock by letting workers leave at the same time. “I mean, two or three weeks ago, the kids were let out of school when it got cold here. Stuck for hours in traffic, Matthew Holcomb, a vice president of engineering at CNN, said he wants to know, “what was the plan?” But at 2.3, when I said 1 to 2, I think that’s OK,” Myers said.Ītlanta mayor: Early city exodus due to snow crippled traffic If that’s wrong, then I take credit for being wrong. Myers himself had predicted up to 2 inches of snow would fall, starting sometime between 12 p.m. “Some of the local meteorologists were more correct on their predictions, that the storm center might be 50 miles north of where the National Weather Service’s modeling had indicated that it would be,” he said.ĬNN meteorologist Chad Myers said Atlanta had plenty of warning. “You’ve already heard some of our agencies saying that based on that modeling, they had not brought in some of the resources earlier because they thought there were going to be other parts of the state that were going to be more severely impacted than the metropolitan Atlanta area.” ![]() “The National Weather Service continually had their modeling showing that the city of Atlanta would not be the primary area where the storm would hit, that it would be south of Atlanta,” Deal said Wednesday. Citing forecasts, he said most of the effects of the storm would be south of the city. During a Tuesday night briefing, the governor called the weather event “an unexpected storm” that hit the metro area. Nathan Deal said the region was caught off guard by weather predictions.
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