ATLANTA - Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal took responsibility Thursday for the poor storm preparations that led to a traffic jam in Atlanta that forced drivers to abandon their cars or sleep in them overnight during a snowstorm.
Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed have found themselves on the defensive ever since the snow started falling and commuters rushed home at the same time that schools let out, causing gridlock throughout metropolitan Atlanta.
“We did not make preparations early enough,” Deal said at a news conference, apologizing to drivers who were stranded and to parents of children forced to sleep at their schools or on school buses.
“I’m not going to look for a scapegoat. I am the governor. The buck stops with me,” he said.
Meanwhile, police and the National Guard helped people collect their abandoned cars two days after the storm.
At the peak of the storm, thousands of cars littered the interstates in Georgia and Alabama. Some people ran out of gas, some were involved in accidents and others simply left their cars on the sides of the roads so they could walk home or to someplace warm.
On Thursday, though, the sun was out across much of the South, temperatures were rising and snow was melting.
About 1,600 students in Alabama who spent two nights at schools finally went home, and all of the state’s highways were reopened. Still, officials warned drivers to be on the lookout for icy patches.
Schools and government offices were still closed Thursday in several states.
At least eight people died in traffic accidents, and six people were killed in fires blamed on space heaters. The latest was in Savannah, Ga., where two children died early Thursday as temperatures hovered below freezing.
In the Midwest, an 86-year-old woman died of hypothermia outside her suburban Chicago home.
North Carolina still had icy conditions, with dangerous roads in much of the state as bone-chilling temperatures overnight Wednesday refroze any snow that had melted.
There was a lot of cleanup to do in the Atlanta area. The Georgia State Patrol said more than 2,000 cars were abandoned along the freeways, and they would be towed Thursday night if people did not move them. Officials said it was critical to get those cars off the highways so the emergency shoulders would be available during normal traffic today.
“It is obvious we have a large commute coming,” said Public Safety Commissioner Col. Mark McDonough. “This is the time for us to get the roads completely cleared of those vehicles.”
A decision had yet to be made on whether state government offices would be closed today.
Atlanta Public Schools announced that the district would be closed for the rest of the week.
Deal said his agencies would undergo internal and external reviews, and make new plans, warning that the public may be inconvenienced the next time severe weather is in the forecast.
“We will be much more cautious and much more aggressive in terms of taking action,” Deal said. “And there will be some situations in which we will take preparatory action, and there may not be anything that occurs.”
For his part, the mayor earlier took the blame for businesses, schools and government letting out all at the same time.
The Atlanta area was crippled by an ice storm in 2011, and officials had vowed not to be caught unprepared again. But only hours after the storm hit this week, it was clear that the city was caught off guard.
Charley English, the head of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, took some of the blame, saying he had “made a terrible mistake and put the governor in an awful position.” English said he should have declared the state emergency command center open earlier and recommended much sooner that state employees be sent home.
“I made a terrible error in judgment earlier, late on Monday afternoon and early Tuesday,” he said at a news conference.
He also acknowledged making “inaccurate and regretful” statements about Georgia’s response at an earlier news conference.
Earlier, Deal blamed federal forecasters, saying he was led to believe that the situation wouldn’t be so bad.
However, the National Weather Service cautioned on Monday that snow-covered roads “will make travel difficult or impossible.” The agency issued a winter storm warning for metropolitan Atlanta early Tuesday and cautioned against driving.
Overall, the Georgia State Patrol responded to some 1,500 car crashes since the storm, with 184 injuries and one weather-related death in metropolitan Atlanta.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 01/31/2014