New Delhi: They made an error of judgement - as always, the southerners lag far behind in prompt response and right judgement. When the cold storm and ice snapped the US South on Tuesday evening (Wednesday morning IST), none was prepared. Office-goers and workers going home were stranded on the roads in snow and traffic jams, the authorities not having acted quickly to stop them stepping out. Some took shelter in roadside stores which had to remain open overnight. And, children in large numbers stayed in their schools for the night in several places like Atlanta and Birmingham. Streets and roads looked like crammed parking lots, vehicles jammed in slippery ice. Although, snow was hardly 3 inches in affected regions stretching from Texas through Louisiana, Georgia and into the Carolinas.
Businesses and government offices have been blamed for sending people home just as the storm was rolling in.The storm swept over a region covering 60 million population unaccustomed to ice.
Louisiana, Georgia worst hit
The people in the South are not used to such wintry storms like the recent ones that struck the Northeast, especially in the higher ranges of Alabama where road clearing equipments were unavailable in Birmingham. The wintry gust killed seven people, mostly in the unlikely Alabama.
In Birmingham, authorities admitted a lack of reponse and failure to foresee the impending calamity, and not even being able to display resourcefulness when it all struck and crippled everything. For good, 800 students remained in their schools overnight in the city.
Highways were witness to over a thousand accidents and looked like huge parking lots everywhere. Thousands of motorists were stuck even for 24 hours after the storm, without food and water. Airlines cancelled thousands of flights, the busiest Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport cancelling some 500 flights in the morning alone. It all looked a repeat of last month's harrowing Northeast story. In south people are just not used to icy conditions.
Louisiana was the worst hit, alongwith Georgia's Atlanta, by the ice and cold.
The snow moved up to the East Coast to Maryland and beyond.
Temperature in Atlanta fell to 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees Celsius). That was the coldest for them in many decades.
Traffic accidents on ice-covered roads created terrible jams, unlike in snow. As it was time the schools were letting out, their buses were stuck, while motorists caught in the jam spent night in their vehicles, some taking shelter in roadside stores for the night.
- RM Nair with inputs from various centres
