-BO- wrote:
Seems to me everybody shoulders some blame here. The city did not do a good job on the roads and then releasing everybody at the same time made matters worse. But the general public deserves some blame as well, they also knew what was coming but just figured everything would work like a normal day, figured somebody else would look after them.
If you know snow and ice are coming you just don't go out, you keep the kids home from school and you work from home. And yeah, I know that's not an option for some people.
Dallas is the same way when snow and ice hits, total paralysis. But many people don't go out, they know the area can't take care of the roads very well. A couple of months ago the day before a bad storm hit, I made sure I had enough groceries for nearly a week and just assumed I wouldn't be going out for many days. The storm iced everything over for several days as I hibernated.
Scar, I'm assuming the media outlets didn't say just stay home the night before. That's what they do here. It does seem as though a lot of teachers deserve a raise for taking proper care of stuck kids. And the media making a fuss over adults sleeping in a grocery store or similar is silly, they were under a roof, warm, had food and drink, and were perfectly safe. Probably half the planet would kill for accommodations that nice.
An event of this magnitude will help make sure that everybody from the mayor to the public does a much better job in this scenario next time.
Well, I was texting with an employee who couldn't find a room from her phone, couldn't find gas, it was 12 degrees at midnight and she was alone and scared halfway home navigating abandoned cars and jack knifed trucks on I-75! and hadn't been out of her car in 11 hours to go to the bathroom. She is a very level headed person who left at about the first snowflakes as she had a ways to go. I wanted to go help her but I knew I was powerless to cross the city.
There were a lot of frightened people out there; I'm amazed there weren't more tragedies.
It really didn't have to be that way, but it was.