StroberThe traffic jam we are talking about had 4,000 percent more snow than this Russian traffic jam.
There was a three-day-long traffic jam in Russia over the weekend. That’s not three hours. That is three days. There was a snowstorm on the M-10, a well-traveled road between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Now, one might think a country where everyone wears giant fur hats everywhere would know what to do when it snowed. You may imagine that they’d have some sort of long-term plan in effect to keep the road between their capital and one of their next-largest cities moving during inclement weather. Alas, what happened was a 125-mile traffic jam and probably some very pissed Russians.
The wait wasn’t exactly pleasant: Restaurants on the route hiked their prices, gas stations ran out of fuel, and there wasn’t enough water to distribute while people sat in cars. Officials set up a few warming stations, but not enough. This was not the first time Russia was slow to respond to a national emergency: Victims of wildfires and floods in 2010 also did not receive the kind of prompt attention the beleaguered Russian citizenry needed.
Geez, Russia. May you never know what it’s like to get poor response to a hurricane.
