I drove my Scion TC and that picture was my commute home from work. If there was anything I could have done different? I don't think there was. It wasn't snowing when I went to work, and the weather forecast listed no warnings for my area; the snow was supposed to hit south of Atlanta. No one was prepared for this - children went to school, people went to work.
When it started to snow, it was just very light flurries. Then, it started accumulating, and the ground was above freezing temperatures, so the snow melted when it hit the ground, and then the temperatures dropped. It was ice within 20 minutes. Everybody who was at work, and in school, decided to try and make it home before it got worse. Except, apparently, everyone decided to do this at the same exact time. Schools let kids go home early too .. so there were school buses stranded out in it.
It became instantaneous traffic grid lock for miles and miles. The gridlock rendered the salt trucks useless, as they could not access any roads. So the roads became worse, and traffic became worse.
I made it home fine. But ... I remember seeing some very panicked faces ... cars sliding down a hill with looks of pure terror from random strangers that had never experienced this before - and not knowing how to drive in it.
I had to stop my vehicle on the way home and help some of these motorists.
I thought ... and thought ... and thought about a way to help, and just knew there had to be a way.
The FB page I was the administrator of, was able to locate stranded motorists that had been out in this for 17+ hours, with no food, no water, out of gas - senior citizens, school buses full of children, and once the page was set up, word spread, and countless volunteers offered their 4x4 and other off roading vehicles to bring aid. It was truly awesome. People are truly awesome. Michelle Sollicito, the creator of the FB group, took advice from all of us to start setting up more localized groups, as the main one was getting much too large, and people were trying to start flame wars with each other on it. So, she made me ad hoc administrator for my neck of the proverbial forest.
It was just a matter of connecting people who needed help, with people who had the means to do so.
The Government isn't going to help you in a massive crisis ... maybe people will learn.
yes, my Scion has traction control with Continental All Season tires
(P.S. We located a teacher stranded on 285 in a passenger van with 15 children who hadn't eaten, used the restroom, slept, were cold, etc. and brought her aid via National Guard - I also directed an out of town family lost in the maze of Atlanta to the Johnson Ferry Road Baptist Church in Marietta, GA, as they had a shelter with food - all by using FB)
As the group grew - more people were reporting in which roads to avoid, etc.
