A winter storm blanketed about six states in the South on Jan 28 and left commuters, schoolkids, and several other people stranded on icy roads for almost 12 hours.
In addition to the exceedingly long commute home for many workers in Atlanta, many kids had to spend the night at their schools because a little more than two inches of snow fell on a city that isn’t accustomed to much winter weather and whose residents depend a great deal on cars for getting around, CNN reports.
“It was like something you would see if they told you the plague broke out and you had to run for your life,” the New York Times quoted one woman as saying who spent nearly 12 hours in her car getting home, along with thousands of other motorists who inched their way along on roads that were coated with ice like the city has never seen. She survived on a bottle of Mountain Dew and a stick of beef jerky. For those much needed bathroom breaks, well, she did what she had to do in the car—twice.
Leigh Walker, a teacher, had breakfast Wednesday with students who spent the night at Oak Mountain Intermediate school in Indian Springs, Ala., the Times said. About 80 children and 20 adults spent the night at the school due to the storm.
CNN via Fox 59 reported that schools in Cherokee County, Ga., north of Atlanta, had 150 students remaining at 11 schools as of Wednesday morning. The number had dwindled to 10 by just after noon.
In all, more than 10,000 students hadn’t arrived home as of 9 PM Tuesday, according to the Georgia governor’s office, but that number shrank to about 2,000 by around noon on Wednesday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
But some schools tried to send students home in the messy commute. In Atlanta, more than 50 kids on two buses were stranded on the road for several hours after their school decided to try to send them home on Tuesday. Firefighters had to escort the bus to their fire station and bring the kids and their bus drivers in for some water and other life-saving supplies, USA Today reported.