Georgia schools should treat severe storms with same caution as snow

Metro Atlanta and most of North Georgia experienced a nasty storm front last Monday.

Warnings about a possibly stormy March 16 commute began the Friday before. The storms began quickly cutting through the far northwest and west metro areas around 4 a.m. but did not leave the Atlanta area until after 7 a.m.

When severe storms threaten during a school commute window, districts should react with the same caution they use when there is even a hint of winter precipitation. School systems could have done a better job during this go-around, especially DeKalb County School District.

This storm front had already spawned some potentially threatening cloud rotations in northwest Georgia and brought heavy wind and rain to anyone in its path. It prompted a tornado warning just after 6 a.m. for DeKalb and Rockdale counties.

The National Weather Service confirmed an EF-0 tornado touched down in DeKalb, along with three other brief tornadoes across the state. The DeKalb twister carved a nearly 3-mile path and reached estimated wind speeds of 75 mph. The Weather Service reported no injuries.

In southeast DeKalb and southwest Rockdale, trees and wires came down. I heard several DeKalb and Rockdale calls on my scanner and did live reports on 11Alive from the scene of a tree that came down on Springwood Hill Road at East Fairview Road, causing a wire to hang low over East Fairview.

We actually alerted Rockdale County of this problem, and police and fire officials eventually blocked off East Fairview until the Snapping Shoals power crew could remove the wire.

Thankfully, traffic was light. This is because Rockdale County delayed its start time by 2½ hours.

Imagine a school bus coming down East Fairview in the dark and hitting that low wire. Think of children waiting at bus stops as the wind snapped trees, or parents idling in carpool lines as the tornado warning notifications blared on their phones.

DeKalb schools did not treat this weather with the same gravity as some other districts or like snowstorms. Just before 6:30 a.m. the district announced on social media a 15-minute hold on all buses. But this still put a small faction of students in the large district in avoidable danger.

The conditions were such that one bus reportedly had to pull into a parking lot to wait out the storm’s fury. And then it had to navigate potential debris and other hazards, tiptoeing the best a giant, yellow bus could to finish the route.

With so many options for remote learning, as flawed as it is, school systems need to be more nimble in inclement weather. As an Atlanta traffic reporter for nearly 22 years, I have seen the danger posed when people have to drive in severe conditions. Even slightly wet roadways increase the chances for danger. Certainly, high winds, blinding rain and lightning are reasons for all ages to hunker down.

School should not go into session or should be dismissed under such circumstances. Full stop.

Employers and school leaders have rightly wised up to the dangers and complexities of winter weather driving, especially after 2014’s Snowmageddon debacle. People treated that work and school day like normal, and many of them got stuck.

Thunderstorms may be less likely to strand people, but they are more likely to harm them. They also are more exact and acute, causing damage and danger more randomly than a system that blankets a region with ice or snow. Storms are sporadic and unpredictable, and the fact we experience them far more often than snow may be why we are not as proactive.

DeKalb schools did not respond to my request for comment by Friday morning. The district told news outlets that, based on the information available at the time, Monday’s conditions “did not meet the threshold for delaying.”

If so, the rules need to change.

Credit: Ben Hendren

Credit: Ben Hendren

On March 12, a DeKalb school bus crashed on wet roads after, authorities said, a vehicle ran a red light and struck the bus. The weather was not severe at the time of the wreck, but this should have put school travel safety to the top of mind for the system’s leaders.

Decatur City schools did delay for two hours. DeKalb did not.

Not only was the weather as messy as predicted, but an actual tornado touched down. Thankfully, no students got hurt. But this is not worth rolling the dice. Thunderstorms need the same treatment as snowstorms, for safety’s sake.

Doug Turnbull covers the traffic/transportation beat for WXIA-TV (11Alive). His reports appear on the 11Alive Morning News 6-9 a.m. and on 11Alive.com. Email Doug at dturnbull@11alive.com. Subscribe to the weekly “Gridlock Guy” newsletter for the column here.