Snow an personal responsibility? rant

I agree with you, but I have the 'Boy Scout' mentality or so my wife says.

 

Reb, I swear, some people seem to use their brains for nothing more than to keep their ears from banging together. I don't know what was forecast for Atlanta, but we knew what was coming to us well in advance, too. They made the decision to close the schools by the time the kids came home Monday afternoon, when the temperature was still in the 60's. Turns out, they probably would have been safe enough holding school on Tuesday, because we only had a few very light sprinkles before about 4:00. On Monday, there were trucks putting down deicing solution on the main roads. By the time it really started coming down late on Tuesday, the temperature was low enough that even a solid layer of salt wouldn't have done any good.

My husband got hit with this same sort of mindset yesterday. The owner of a couple of small shopping centers called him Tuesday morning to ask him to put salt down on the parking lots. To me, he said, "it would have been nice if he'd given me an idea that he'd want that on Monday, when there was still some salt to be bought . . . ." Hubby called around, found someone who still had some for sale, hauled it over to the shopping centers, and spent a good part of the day putting it out. Wednesday morning, he got a call from the owner, who had gotten complaints from the tenants in at least one of the stores to the effect that, "I don't know what that guy was throwing around in the parking lot, but it made it very slippery for the customers by late afternoon." No thought that the icy precipitation might be what they were slipping on - oh no! - it's the stuff that the landscaper was putting out that is causing them to slip!

 

I've been thinking pretty much the same thing since all this occurred. Even I knew it was going to hit Atlanta and I'm in Virginia!

I understand they're not used to getting ice and snow so I've wondered if they thought it was going to be all great fun and a snow day off without any thought as to what would it would do to the roads. Ice is tricky, tricky stuff and you have to always think that snow will bring it otherwise you're screwed. I'm guessing that's what happened.

As far as going in to work and to school, there are times you just say NO and stay home no matter what work or school says. We had to do that a few times when I was a kid and I've done it as an adult. If you go out knowing a mess is on the way then you have no one to blame but yourself when you're stuck out in it.

Fingers crossed that people learn from this and are better prepared next time.

 

LOL! Just finished watching your video. Glad you didn't get too far from home before you hit the ditch. Appears the snow hit the road, melted, refroze and is solid ice. No one can drive in that stuff.

And don't feel bad about wrecking so close to home. I once did $1,600. damage in our own driveway. Yep - ICE. Had the kids in the car [in their appropriate seats, of course] and was slowly going down the drive as I knew it was solid ice. Well, daughter in the back seat lets out a huge SHRIEK and I turned my head to look at her over my right shoulder. When I turned my head, my hands also turned and I slid off the drive - into our woods - and the car jumped up onto a small stump that my husband had cut off at an angle. The stump actually impaled my transmission. I got off the stump and made it to the babysitters, bleeding a red transmission fluid path on the snow without knowing it. Argggghhhh!

Best of all, WHY did daughter scream?? Her hair was caught in the seat belt. Sheesh . . .

 

Wow, I didn't realize thing were that bad in the south. While I'm in school, news just doesn't make it into my everyday activities! LOL

We have had a LOT of snow here in upstate NY. However, this area is incredibly efficient at clearing the snow and there is so much salt residue on the roads, that hardly anything sticks. Not quite the same in NJ. After having to drive for hours through terrible storms and roads that had not been plowed, I never want to do that again if I don't have to! Part of the reason I moved to an apartment only three minutes from my school. Though I definitely expected the winter here to be a lot worse. I'm still looking forward to warmer weather though.