stranded motorists. (One unit included Clark Howard, a GNG reservist who is well known as a consumer reporter for WSB-TV 2 and nationally for a daily radio show based at WSB AM 750.) Cars blocking lanes of travel were towed, with most jurisdictions paying for towing to the road shoulder, or to a location where cars could be retrieved later (for example, the state towed cars from the west side of I-285 and I-20 to the West Lake MARTA station parking lot). Cobb was the only county that was only offering reduced prices rather than free towing, despite being one of the counties that caused the problem by failing to pre-treat roads. Only MARTA rail continued to run, while MARTA buses and other bus systems had to halt service. As a result of the snowy and icy conditions around Atlanta, the National Basketball Association decided to postpone a game between the Detroit Pistons and Atlanta Hawks. Alabama Severe travel disruptions also resulted in Birmingham, and many schools in northern Alabama also encountered similar issues as in Georgia. Further east, in the Carolinas, schools closed for the following day in Charlotte and Columbia. A state of emergency was declared by governors in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. At one point, a continuous string of winter storm warnings was draped across at least eight states from Texas to the Carolinas, a distance of over . The storm also forced several airports to cancel 3,000 U.S. flights, the hardest hit being Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Chicago O'Hare and Houston Intercontinental. Aftermath The governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, and the mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed, both faced heavy local and national media criticism over their handling of the event, particularly after they and other local officials tried to wrongly blame official NWS forecasts. However, Atlanta city limits only encompass about 10% of the nearly five million people in metro Atlanta (which is in turn about half of all Georgians). The other 90% live in other cities or in unincorporated areas of counties. With more than a dozen counties, each with multiple cities, very little intergovernmental cooperation occurs due to local politics, and there is no metropolitan government except for a weak planning agency. Further complications are because commuting frequently occurs between suburbs rather than to the city and back, so that even if Atlanta were to act on its own,