Atlanta in an emergency

[Need4Camaro]

Originally Posted by alco89

But I don't have a whole lot of faith in our government leadership to be organized or proactive. We simply have too many governments/too much provincialism (compared to Houston) and finger-pointing when it comes to stuff like that and then we'd have to rely on the state, which isn't very reassuring. Snowjam 2014 comes to mind.

lol !!! Our government finger points all the time. They blamed a homeless man for burning down a reinforced concrete bridge, and the mayor himself pointed fingers at the weather man, the truck drivers and any source he could for the catastrophic traffic during Snowmagheddon.

Also note, Houston only received 2.5 days of warning before the storm surfaced so its not like they had alot of time to plan and if you think evacuating a city of 6 million people onto the highway would have been a great idea, remember Snowmagheddon because thats EXACTLY what would happen.

Originally Posted by toll_booth

Honestly I don't think it would be that bad.

-We're much hillier than Houston is. Even the worst of our floods, such as the ones that happened about a decade ago, tend to have very localized effects.
-When Snowmagheddon shut the whole place down a couple years ago, we did NOT have widespread looting or other forms of bad behavior (so you can stop getting paranoid, tikigod). Some Atlantans even went out of their way to help out strangers.
-When we lost a section of a major interstate highway earlier this year, we figured out ways to commute around it for the most part. And thank God for MARTA.
-Massive urban fires are practically a thing of the past, thanks to much stricter fire codes and firefighting.
-Tornadoes I am a little worried about, but our risk of those monster tornadoes is lower than it is in the Great Plains or in Mississippi (a state with a VERY underrated tornado risk).
-Thanks to DHS, every major city has to have a disaster management plan.

Not saying that **** might not still hit the fan. Because it could. So I intend not to be paranoid, but prepared, should disaster strike.

Atlanta is no better, or no worse prepared for any catastrophic event than any other major city.. if anything slightly worse because the road infrastructure here would magnify the disaster if people tried to flee.

That said.. one decent thing Atlanta does have going for it, is it would take a freak mother nature event to take it down since its not in path of Hurricanes and the hills would prevent alot of flooding here.

[ATLTJL]

Do you think an article like this could be written about us?

How Houston's layout may have made its flooding worse - CNN

[krogerDisco]

Originally Posted by JMatl

As did Atlanta and Dallas. We took about 35,000.

Houston took 250,000. Atlanta is not Houston's "sister" city.

[Laaaa]

Atlanta is probably not prepared for a lot of disasters but I also think the likely hood of said disasters are very low or limited impact.
Like those who have stated before, Atlanta is not a coastal city and would not suffer a direct hit from a hurricane, just the rain bands at most. We have rolling hills (allows for runoff to go downhill) and a good bit of green-space to absorb rain. Flooding is very localized and we would not see widespread flooding just due to the topography alone.
No major fault lines for earthquakes nearby.
Tornados are an issue, but it would have to be a purely epic tornado, like disaster movie level to cause widespread damage.

Problems that I do think could happen and affect us on a widespread scale.

Huge snowstorm, The Storm of the Century back in '93. I think Atlanta got 10 in of snow, so we definitely would have issues if this happens again.
Terrorism like others have said, there could be a chemical attack, dirty bomb (radiation), etc...

Basically, just be a Boy Scout, and always be prepared.

[tikigod311]

Originally Posted by toll_booth

-When Snowmagheddon shut the whole place down a couple years ago, we did NOT have widespread looting or other forms of bad behavior (so you can stop getting paranoid, tikigod). Some Atlantans even went out of their way to help out strangers.

That's a good point. I definitely stuck around through icepocalypse and I was in College Park. But there's a wide range of severity when it comes to emergencies. A loss of services like cell coverage and power for more than 48 hours, I'm certain chaos will start brewing. Sure, that's pretty unlikely, but that's the type of emergency I am considering.

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by bu2

Heavy rains leading to lots of trees falling and a massive loss of power. That could be difficult. Much of the city not only without A/C, but also without refrigerators to keep the beer cold!

Having the beer go warm could be a problem, I admit.