BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - Thousands of people stranded overnight at school, at work or in their cars began getting home Wednesday as ice melted from Alabama highways and crews cleared roads littered with wrecked and abandoned vehicles.
The winter storm that hit Alabama on Tuesday was wider and more severe than many officials expected. The National Weather Service revised its forecast shortly before snow and ice started falling, but for many citizens the warning came too late. Five people died in crashes that state troopers said appeared weather-related. The deaths were near Wetumpka, Marion and Cottondale.
Thousands of wrecked and abandoned cars were scattered across Birmingham area roads Wednesday. The state Department of Transportation towed cars from Interstate 20 to make it passable.
“It looked like the zombie apocalypse,” Republican state Rep. Mack Butler of Rainbow City said Wednesday. He was driving to a meeting of the Legislature on Tuesday when he had to stop at a gas station in Birmingham and spent the night in his pickup truck because highways were impassable.
Warmer weather Thursday is expected to finish clearing roads, but many schools in south and central Alabama are remaining closed. State offices will reopen at noon Thursday.
“The traffic is proceeding very slowly, but we are making progress,” Gov. Robert Bentley said Wednesday afternoon.
It was much different Tuesday night.
Linda Moore spent 12 hours stuck in her car on Interstate 65 south of Birmingham before a firefighter used a ladder to help her cross the median wall and a shuttle bus took her to a hotel where about 20 other stranded motorists spent the night in a conference room.
“I boohooed a lot,” she said. “It was traumatic. I’m just glad I didn’t have to stay on that interstate all night, but there are still people out there.”
Moore’s car moved less than 4 miles and burned a half-tank of gas during the ordeal. Her daughter, a teacher, was stranded at school with kindergarteners overnight.
Karen Evans spent the night with about 100 people at the Pelham Civic Complex after being unable to get home to Columbiana. She left work after 10 a.m. and had only moved a few miles on U.S. 31 by 5 p.m., but she did make it to the shelter.
“People were getting out of their cars and just leaving them in the road,” Evans said.
State helicopters flew over Jefferson and Shelby counties searching for stranded motorists who hadn’t received help, and 350 National Guard troops were activated to help with rescues. But state Emergency Management Director Art Faulkner said none was found who hadn’t received assistance.
About 11,000 children were stranded at schools statewide Tuesday night because buses couldn’t get them home and parents couldn’t get to the schools, said Michael Sibley, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Education. Most were in the Birmingham area.
Some 1,600 children remained in schools by late Wednesday afternoon, and some would have to spend a second night, he said.
At Deer Valley Elementary School in Hoover, second-grade teacher Lindsey Calton Nichols joined other teachers in caring for 200 students overnight. They watched movies, slept on gym mats with coats for blankets, and ate sausage biscuits and fresh strawberries for breakfast.
“There were no tears. The kids were actually having lots of fun,” she said.
Volunteers with four-wheel-drive trucks carried students home throughout the night and morning. Her husband spent the night with their 2-year-old son at a nearby child care center. A volunteer they had never met gave them a ride home around 11 a.m. Wednesday, along with the last student Nichols had left in her class.
“We at the schools were the lucky ones and the safe ones. It’s the people stranded in cars and the people rescuing them who need to be prayed for,” she said.
One of those volunteers, Hoover builder Sean Denard, said he used his four-wheel drive truck to tow about 25 vehicles and to give rides to about 20 people on Tuesday night and Wednesday. He said he had rushed Deer Valley Elementary to pick up his daughter and saw two older women who got stuck while trying to get up a hill. He towed them and never stopped helping until the sun started melting ice Wednesday afternoon.
“There were plenty of close calls, but I managed not to put a scratch on my truck. Maybe I was born to be a tow truck driver,” he said.
The governor took to statewide TV Wednesday afternoon to thank people like Denard and called them “snow angels.”
The storm shut down roads and schools from Fort Payne to the Florida line.
In Montgomery, Mayor Todd Strange closed all streets Tuesday night and Wednesday morning due to heavy icing. “It came in earlier and a little more robust than we were led to believe,” he said.
A spokesman for the Alabama Department of Transportation said workers did not treat Birmingham-area roadways with salt and brine because the line of severe ice was supposed to hit about 100 miles to the south.
“The Birmingham area was not forecast to have that weather,” spokesman Tony Harris said.
He called it “the worst possible combination” because schools and businesses closed suddenly in the Birmingham area, filling roads with cars as the weather worsened.
The governor said state officials had shifted road equipment to central and south Alabama based on the preliminary forecast and had to make adjustments after the Birmingham area got hit hard. “Unfortunately the predictions were not exactly what we thought they would be,” Bentley said.
The National Weather Service acknowledged that initial forecasts did not predict the severe issues in Birmingham. The major snow band was expected to hit farther south, but a revised forecast about an hour before snow started falling Tuesday morning predicted a major impact in Birmingham.
The weather service said it tried to stress the uncertainty in the forecast and that a slight shift in position of the snow band could impact the Birmingham area.
“This system was particularly complex and throughout the event, we communicated the uncertainty of snow totals and impact,” the weather service said in a statement.
In Hoover, police said they rescued about 200 people who were stuck overnight in cars on Interstate 65 or I-459 as temperatures fell to near 10 degrees.
John Reagan, the manager of business near U.S. 280 in Birmingham, said he took in about 20 people walking off the iced-over highway in need of shelter.
“We told them we had a space that was warm and available,” Reagan said.
On Wednesday, they walked back to their vehicles. But traffic still had miles-long backups because of icy bridges.
There was a bright spot: Electricity stayed on for most people.
Alabama Power, the state’s largest electric utility, reported no problems in central and south Alabama. Alabama Power and other utilities reported about 21,000 customers without power in south Alabama at the height of the storm, but that was reduced to less than 1,000 by Wednesday afternoon, mostly in the Dothan areas. Most of those were supposed to have power by Thursday morning, officials said.
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AP writers Phillip Rawls and Kim Chandler contributed to this report from Montgomery, Alabama
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