South cleans up after storm that killed 15

Southerners scraped their way out of a deep freeze that caused a standstill across much of the region.

DURHAM, N.C. » Southerners shoveled, scraped and plowed their way Thursday out of a snowy deep freeze that caused a standstill across much of a region accustomed to mild winters.

At least 15 people died, including a baby in a car that slid off an icy overpass outside New Orleans, and a 6-year-old boy who sledded onto a roadway in Virginia.

Authorities across the South urged drivers to stay off treacherous roads. Louisiana highways remained closed and New Orleans residents were avoiding showers to restore pressure to a system plagued by frozen pipes. Atlanta was slowly returning to normal after being frozen in its tracks by about an inch of snow.

All this raises a familiar question: Why do severe winters seem to catch southerners unprepared? Experts on disaster planning say it’s tough to justify maintaining fleets of snow plows when the weather’s only occasionally nasty.

“People are putting their money, their resources and their planning time where it’s most necessary, and that has to do with an understanding of what the risks are in any place,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.

Still, “if you get even a modest amount of snow, you can’t be caught completely unprepared for that either,” he said.

North Carolina is accustomed to getting some snow, but people were surprised at the ferocity of this storm, which dumped as much as an inch per hour from the mountains to the coast and piled a foot of snow in parts of Durham County.

In Atlanta, temperatures remained below freezing until midday. Metro Atlanta’s commuter rail system was operating on a limited schedule as the city recovered from the approximately 1 inch of snow and ice that brought the area to a standstill.

On Thursday, airlines canceled another 200 flights at Atlanta’s airport, and dozens of other flights at airports in Charlotte and Raleigh.

Schools remained closed or had delayed openings across much of the region, effectively giving many students a seven-day break as the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday extended through Thursday.

Louisiana was also struggling to dig out. Every interstate in Baton Rouge remained closed Thursday morning, including Interstates 10 and 12, which were blocked to motorists across the southeastern stretch of the state.