Atlanta in the Snow

In case you hadn’t heard, my hometown of Atlanta was a hot mess last week when we received two inches of snow and had to shut down the city with cars abandoned on the road in a truly spooky Walking Dead style. The last time I experienced a storm like this was before I left for Australia in 2011. I learned that there were some 4 snowplows for the whole city back then and it seems our local government still hasn’t learned their lesson.

The day started like any other and I was working as a substitute teacher a mile away from my house. I was co-teaching in kindergarten and there had been rumors all day about leaving early due to snow. But I was assured that there would be no way we were leaving. It was supposed to hit the south side of Atlanta, not the north. But then 10 am arrived and little white flurries started to fall on the playground.

Within an hour, it was falling hard and sticking, so the powers at be announced that we would be having lunch early, a federal mandate, and dismissing afterwards. The school flew into chaos, trying to organize how every child was supposed to get home and calling their parents to confirm. We got most of them on the bus, just hoping that the roads hadn’t gotten too icy to deliver them home. Once we’d sent all our kids home, it was time to get ourselves there.

My mom and I rode together in her car and picked up a stranded teacher who barely made it out of the parking lot. As we made it to the bottom of the hill near our house, we saw at least four cars that were stuck, as well as one mail truck and one school bus.

We made the decision to park at a nearby neighborhood and walk the rest of the way through the snow, now at two inches. Over the course of the day, dozens of cars became stuck on our road, making it impossible to leave in either direction, even if we had an appropriate vehicle.

I didn’t leave the house for the next few days, but did walk down the hill to assess the damage. Cars were pushed into ditches and residents had blocked off the road with their trash cans so that no one else would get stuck. Back at home, the news was constant, between press conferences from the mayor and governor, as well as reports on traffic.

It was true chaos, yet there was nothing to do but wait. Hundreds of people were stuck in their cars for over ten hours and others never made it home. One woman even gave birth in her car. When I finally left for the airport to go to New York last Friday, we went the long way around, passing entire highways full of abandoned cars along the way.

There are plenty of lessons to be learned from this disaster, namely how unprepared we are for natural disasters and how reliant we are upon vehicles over public transportation. But many stories came out about the kindness of strangers in the face of the storm. People brought snacks and food from their houses to stranded motorists and even took them into their homes. Children who were stuck at school were well fed and looked after.

Did you see snow last week?