The lead-in...
Kim Severson reports at the NYT that by keeping schools and government offices open, and by not requiring tractor-trailers to use chains or stay out of the city's core, metropolitan Atlanta gambled and lost (//vny!://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/us/ice-storm-southern-united-states.html).
"We don't want to be accused of crying wolf," said Gov. Nathan Deal, who pointed out that the storm had been forecast to just brush the south side of the city. If the city had been closed and the storm had been as light as some forecasters had told him it was going to be, he said, money would have been lost, and people would have complained.
Tuesday's snowfall, that brought only 2-3 inches of snow to most of the Atlanta metro area, and the hundreds of thousands of motorists who flooded the metropolitan area's roadways as the storm moved in — created travel nightmares for commuters, truckers, students and their families. Some commuters were stuck in their vehicles up to 18 hours (//vny!://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/29/atlanta-winter-storm-response/5029489/) after they first hit the roads. Others abandoned their cars in or beside the road. Hundreds of students spent the night at school.
Some surrounding cities, including Hiram, Woodstock, Sandy Springs and Acworth, opened emergency shelters for stranded motorists. "It's an easy joke made by Northerners," (//vny!://www.businessinsider.com/atlanta-traffic-2014-1) wrote Joe Sterling and Sarah Aarthun. "A dusting of snow shuts down an entire city and hapless drivers white-knuckle their way through a handful of flurries." Further North streets are salted well in advance of a coming storm but Atlanta doesn't have the capacity for that kind of treatment.
The kicker....
"We simply have never purchased the amount of equipment necessary," said meteorologist Chad Myers adding Atlanta had plenty of warning. "Why would you in a city that gets one snow event every three years? Would you buy 500 snowplows and salt trucks and have them sit around for 1,000 days (//vny!://www.cnn.com/2014/01/29/us/atlanta-traffic-hell-why/), waiting for the next event?"
YES, YES I WOULD, you stupid bastard. That's what emergency equipment often does, UNLESS YOU'RE TOO STUPID TO BUY IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. Because by the time you need it, IT'S TOO LATE YOU STUPID f*ck.
