And Then The Snow Fell….

I relocated with my family to North Carolina from New Jersey in 2004, in a bid to escape the crowds and high costs associated with living in the New York City suburbs. Under the best travel conditions we could get into Manhattan in about thirty-five minutes, a possibility on a clear Sunday morning or very late at night.

These days we reside in Cary, a large suburb wedged between Raleigh and Durham. In its own right, this city of nearly 150,000 people has a lot going on for it, hosting national sporting events including college soccer and baseball. Cary reminds me of my New Jersey home town, Ridgewood, but much more spread out.

But when it comes to snow or the threat of wintry precipitation, the similarities between these two communities comes to a slippery halt.

Today, I’m witnessing a Triangle spectacle: people panicking over the mere threat of snow. The Triangle was once defined as Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, but the sprawling metropolis now encompasses at least four counties and more than one million residents.

Residents include natives as well as many transplants from the northeast, midwest, and California, a mixed bag of people who uprooted their lives in pursuit of a job, schools, retirement, and other reasons.

Clearly, some people are accustomed to driving in the snow, but a lot of people here aren’t. Worse, we’re just far enough south to where most cities and counties don’t invest all that much in snow removal equipment and road salt which means that whatever falls usually melts and refreezes within moments.

We found out how ridiculous it can get when in January 2005 a surprise one inch midday snowfall closed down schools and businesses at once, sending everyone scrambling to pick up children and head home. That storm made national news because everything iced over and traffic came to a halt.

Reports quickly came in that children were stranded at school, interstate traffic was backed up for more than twenty miles, and the entire area was paralyzed under a thin, icy grip.

It took almost a day for traffic to clear which meant that young children had to stay at school overnight with their teachers and some people slept in their cars. No joke – the entire Wake County Public School System, which relies on busing to transport kids all across the county – had to warehouse thousands of students for a night.

Our little adventure on January 19, 2005, became the butt of jokes on national news, with local leaders pointing fingers, forming commissions and studies, before finally establishing a working plan in a bid to avert repeating the debacle. That plan was outlined one sultry night in the middle of the summer when people were on vacation or too hot to care.

Well today the snow began to fall on this last day of school for 2009. Temperatures were in the upper-30s and began to drop in the early afternoon when the snow began descending. Soon, we received calls from our boys’ teachers announcing a one hour early release, with my wife and I hoping that the botch job of 2005 wouldn’t repeat itself.

Thankfully, the snow shower was brief and wet, which meant that our boys made it home early with no worry that this Christmas they’d spend it snowbound at school.

Yes, I know that I am exaggerating which is something I tend to do after a week’s worth of work, several lengthy edits, and with Christmas just days away. But I’m also giddy because since I do work at home I don’t have to contend with what promises to be a very messy evening commute.

See Also — North Carolina State University: January 19, 2005 Winter Storm

Fed Photo Op Creates A Panic In NYC

Chalk this one up to poor communication: one of the Boeing 747 jetliners that carries the president was used in a photo opportunity yesterday. That op had the aircraft flying down the Hudson River between New Jersey and Manhattan at a very low altitude, not much above the level that two hijacked planes were flown at when they smashed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers on September 11, 2001, killing thousands.

Prior to the terrorist attacks, a low flying jetliner wouldn’t have gotten any reaction from normally steely New Yorkers. But, 9/11 forever changed the way New Yorkers look up to the sky, raising suspicion, even panic whenever a low-flying jet is spotted. Yesterday, thousands of workers evacuated their offices, with many fleeing on foot to move away from the “attack zone” just as they did in 2001.

Not A Comedy, But Almost A Tragedy

Yesterday’s incident might have been dismissed as a comedy of errors had it been recognized for what it was: a poorly executed photo op. Worse, the jetliner was trailed the whole time by an F-16 fighter jet, suggesting to many people in the city that a follow up attack was underway, with the Air Force jet dispatched to intercept the wayward aircraft.

Most insulting of all was that Air Force officials, who were behind the assignment, asked that the flight remain confidential. New York City’s police department knew about the photo op as did a junior aid in the Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s administration. That aid never informed the mayor who was understandably livid over the communication snafu.

A Flying Photo Op

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sent an email to City Hall which outlined a “flying photo op” designed to snap glamour shots of the 747 jetliner as it winged its way down the Hudson River, circling past the Statue of Liberty. Flight patterns were identified as was the 1100-1500 foot altitude of the shoot.

However, the FAA instructed that the only those persons “with a need to know” be informed with specific instructions to keep the public out of the loop due to public concern over low-flying aircraft.

Huh?!

Obviously, someone goofed within the FAA, failing to realize that keeping the information hush-hush would create more of a problem. The weather on Monday was beautiful not unlike the conditions on that fateful day in 2001. Take similar weather conditions, add in a low-flying jumbo jetliner and follow that up with a “pursuing” attack jet and you have the makings of 9/11 Redux.

Lessons To Be Learned

The rebuke from the Bloomberg administration was swift as was it forceful. That junior aid had a warning letter put into his personal file, but you have to wonder if the photo op would have taken place had the mayor known about it. Sensitive to the feelings of New Yorkers, Bloomberg most likely would have objected to the flight or at the very least insisted that the public had the right to know.

For his part, PresidentObama voiced his strong displeasure over the communication snafu, a mission which simply would have updated several photo files, but ended up causing panic that resulted in mental harm to fleeing workers as well as millions of dollars in lost productivity.

These days, many Americans simply don’t trust their elected officials. Yesterday’s events gave them one more reason to doubt the actions of local, state and federal officials, resulting in a fall out which cannot yet be measured.

Additional Reading: Lessons From The Great Cuil Failure