A Southern Snow Shovel

I currently live in an in-city high-rise on Peachtree Road that houses hundreds of Brookhaven residents. This is one of the worst places I've ever lived. The elevators are broken much of the time—way too often. The plumbing is old and not well-maintained. Pipes burst, flooding apartments or the downstairs storage area, on a regular basis. Worse, the front office staff response to incidents like that is, "Well, it's a high-rise; water is going to flow down!" In other words, flooding is to be expected, and I should have known that before I stored all my valuables in my assigned storage bin in the basement.

I kid you not.

My hot water heater was 25 years old (at least ten years past its normal 'life'), and it took three weeks of cold showers last February and excessive coaxing to get management to replace it. They'd told me it was only about 10 years old, but the serial number displayed a manufacture date of 9/85. My icemaker didn't work when I first moved in, but the maintenance guy didn't believe me. Despite no ice falling at all in the 24 hours since I'd lowered the lever, he said it takes "days" for it to fill the bucket. A week later, they replaced the ice maker. And the kitchen faucet.

There have been dozens of other issues. Needless to say, the building management and staff here is a tad inept. I didn't expect any differently when the snow started to fall after 8PM on Sunday. A basic rule of thumb for winter storm safety is this: remove the snow while it is still snow. Later, it becomes slush; then it turns into thick, lumpy, solid ice that is impossible to drive or walk on.

As the snow fell Sunday night, as clearly predicted several days in advance, building staff didn't lift a single finger to remove the snow. Consequently, by Tuesday a solid moat of ice had formed around the building. The driveway was impassable, leaving hundreds of residents imprisoned here in the building for days.

On Day 3, I was worried. I am scheduled to begin moving today, and the movers are due here tomorrow. I finally ventured downstairs yesterday to see how the driveway looked. As I exited, I bumped into the non-English speaking groundskeeper on his way into the building. My first thought was, "Oh good, they are finally out working on the problem." That was when I looked down and realized that what he was carrying was not a snow shovel but rather a garden hoe. "Oh my god," I thought to myself sarcastically, "He thinks that's a snow shovel."

Needless to say, the 4" thick ice moat was still 100% intact.

Yes, this is the South. No, it doesn't normally snow this much. And, usually, if it does snow a significant amount, it doesn't stick (or stick around). Typically, it's gone in a day. But this was different. The weatherman clearly advised us that the storm would start Sunday night, dumping up to six inches of snow on Atlanta. We were also forewarned that the storm would continue on Monday, in the form of sleet, freezing rain, and ice, and that temperatures would remain below freezing for several days.

We all heard the news, well in advance. If I was still in NY, or even D.C., building maintenance crews would have stayed up all night shoveling snow, and residents would have awakened to a clear driveway and clear sidewalks.

My apartment building management and maintenance staff chose not to respond. This does not surprise me. God forbid there ever be a real emergency in this decrepit building. They will be sadly unprepared.

Today, I pray for sunshine and temperatures above freezing. I just want to move tomorrow and get the heck out of this broken-down place!

On a side note: I haven't been in my car since Sunday. One reason not to get on the road this week is because your less intelligent breed of southerner thinks that he can drive on this treacherous ice at normal speeds (which in Atlanta is 20mph over the limit). Take this moron, for example, who spun his tires on the ice so long that he killed his BMW in flames. See You Tube for the (illegally recorded) newscast.