SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — Stranded drivers in the City of South Fulton say there was too much ice on the roads and they’re asking city leaders to do better.
Channel 2′s Tom Jones talked to City of South Fulton Councilwoman Helen Zenobia Willis who says the city will learn from how it handled Tuesday’s snow.
Jones talked to drivers who says the roads were filled with too much ice near Camp Creek Parkway and South Fulton Parkway. He came across one driver who was on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck driver after he says the ice caused him to slide.
“I came across that bridge and lost control, about ran off,” driver Preston Reid said.
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“I thought I was going to go off the road. I said, ‘Sis, I’m scared. I think I’m going to die,’” stranded driver Mileon Francois said, after retrieving her car the next day.
Francois says her SUV began slipping and sliding on ice on Old Fairburn Road on Tuesday. She says she sat in her car for three hours after the ice prevented her car from moving.
She says the City of South Fulton could have done a better job treating the roads.
“They need to do better so this won’t happen again,” she told Jones.
“I would say the City of South Fulton did do the best that they could,” Councilwoman Willis said.
She says the city treated roads with 6,200 pounds of calcium chloride and 12 tons of sand. But she said they didn’t do it until 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, which was right before the snow started falling.
“We can’t salt roads and treat roads while people are driving,” Willis said.
She said several water main breaks also contributed to the problem.
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“We just started giving people a ride,” Christopher McCreary said.
McCreary was a hero to so many stranded drivers near Old Fairburn Road. He rode around with two friends rescuing people all night.
“They ain’t got no rope or nothing we can pull it,” you could hear him say on video he and his friends recorded.
He and his friends rode around pulling people to safety or giving them a ride home with his G-Wagon four-wheel drive in the spirit of his recently passed mother.
“Just giving back. God blessed me and so it was a chance to bless somebody,” he said.
Willis said South Fulton Parkway was a major problem. GDOT is responsible for the parkway and says it pretreated the road Friday.
Willis also says the city will look into adding equipment to help it better deal with snow events like we saw yesterday. She says the city’s one snow removal truck crashed and couldn’t be used. She said a lot of the problems were roads leading into communities.
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