Tag Archives: Southern storm

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Georgia prepared for the worst … and got it

Who knew?

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal got it right this time. He declared a state of emergency ahead of a monster winter storm, as did President Obama.

Lo and behold! Georgians got the message, stayed off the roads and spared themselves a whole lot of the chaos that enveloped the state during the first monster storm that pounded it in January.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/deep-freeze/bone-chilling-winter-blast-wipes-out-power-south-n28156

Deal, a Republican, today thanked his constituents for heeding the call to stay off the roads and highways. For their part, Georgians ought to thank Deal for alerting them in advance of the trouble that was arriving — rather than ignoring the forecasters’ predictions prior to the January storm, which is what Deal did.

His state’s residents paid a huge price for the traffic jams that clogged the state’s interstate highway system in Atlanta. Deal was left with a huge public relations nightmare, as was Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.

They weren’t about to snooker the public a second time.

It’s good to know that public officials actually can learn from their mistakes.

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Hope for best, plan for worst

It’s been hysterical the past two days watching Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed try to explain their way out of an embarrassing lack of preparation for a storm they knew could be coming.

Georgia and much of the Deep South have been clobbered by a rare snow and ice storm. The traffic crisis in Atlanta appeared to especially acute, with cars jamming freeways, trucks jackknifing everywhere, vehicles crashing — and with virtually zero public works crews responding with assistance.

The city and the state were caught flat-footed.

Gov. Deal said local weather forecasters told him the National Weather Service was wrong in its prediction of seriously inclement weather. He went with the locals. Mayor Reed said much the same thing, that the locals knew best about what to expect.

Well, now they’ve been quite chastened by their constituents for failing to heed the warnings from the NWS, which didn’t exactly predict such a storm would occur, but said that it could happen.

Those of us in the Texas Panhandle know how difficult it is to predict the weather, given its volatile nature and its sudden changes in fortune.

Deal today did apologize to Georgia residents for the state’s failure to respond. For that he deserves a pat on the back.

Still, it seems odd that the state’s elected officials — namely the governor and the mayor of Georgia’s largest city and the home of its state government — wouldn’t react to what they were told might occur.

You hope for the best but plan for the worst.