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Reed Offers Plan For Fixing City’s Snow Response

January 31st, 2014

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed says he has a plan for improving the city’s response to future snowstorms after the city and state became a national laughing stock over the handling of Tuesday’s storm. As heard on the radio

Speaking to the Atlanta Press Club at a luncheon Friday afternoon, Reed conceded Atlanta’s reputation took a “severe hit” this week after 2 inches of snow brought the city to a screeching halt in mere hours.

“In terms of our reputation nationally, I think we’ll earn it back day by day.”

Reed said he’s ordered a review of the city’s handling of the storm and will ask the city council to allocate more money in the upcoming budget for snow removal equipment.

“We’re going to double our spreader capacity and our de-icing capability so that when we receive a severe weather warning, we’re going to have a robust capability that gets out and begins to pretreat our roads immediately,” Reed said.

Reed said the city will also partner with the area-based Weather Channel to help improve city response to future storms.

“They have offered to help the city of Atlanta become a model for how to best create a weather ready city,” adding the partnership was not a response to jabs from The Daily Show Thursday night over the station’s proximity to the city.

Reed said he plans to set up a working group to develop an emergency response and work dismissal plan in the case of another storm. Reed said the group will look at staggering the closings of schools, government and private businesses – a plan Reed has repeated as a solution to the gridlock that left thousands of drivers stranded, some for an entire day.

“I certainly have the stature and the force of personality to have ordered or to have strongly recommended that we need to get our kids out of here, let their parents go get them, close our private sector businesses, and then move our government employees home,” Reed said.

Asked how he’d realistically implement that plan – he said it still needs to be vetted by industry professionals.

“And if the experts come back and say that’s a dumb idea, then I’ll tell you all that this was my idea, but I know that the idea is to move a million people out of the city at once,” he said.

Reed said he also plans to hire a city emergency management executive to implement his recommendations.