Both sides of icy Interstate 95 in Virginia remained blocked Tuesday after a shutdown stranded cars and trucks for 48 miles south of Washington, leaving motorists stuck for more than 24 hours.
State officials were clearing exit ramps between Prince William and Caroline counties to remove vehicles from the highway, saying they hoped to reopen I-95 by tonight. Some vehicles would need to be towed, having been abandoned while stuck in snow or out of gas, authorities said.
Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight
“We do anticipate finishing today,” Marcie Parker, the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Fredericksburg district engineer, said at a Tuesday news conference. She said work might stretch into the night but she expected the highway to reopen in time for the Wednesday morning rush.
Story continues below advertisement
Transportation officials said there were multiple crashes in the Fredericksburg area Monday, some involving jackknifed tractor-trailers, as hundreds of motorists — many without food or water — became increasingly frustrated at what some said was a lack of help during a long, freezing night in their cars. Stranded motorists included a U.S. senator, and families with children and elderly relatives. Many sat at a standstill for hours in the cold, worried about running low on gas, snacks and medicine as snow amounts overwhelmed road crews.
Advertisement
Sophia Colson, 34, of Farmville, Va., said she heard motorists scream in the dark in frustration Monday night. Some abandoned their vehicles and tried to walk along the highway, including people she saw fall in the snow and ice.
“There’s nowhere to go,” Colson said Tuesday after being stuck on northbound I-95 for 19 hours with her 63-year-old aunt, who has one lung and needs oxygen, a diabetic brother and her 13-year-old son. They had missed a family funeral in New York and had subsisted on diet Dr Pepper, cheese crackers and gingersnap cookies while their gas tank neared empty.
Story continues below advertisement
“We’re trying to stay positive,” Colson said. “But it feels like we’ve been abandoned. VDOT just left us stranded last night and didn’t try to do anything to get us out of this situation. They didn’t put in the effort.”
Advertisement
VDOT officials said they were prepared for the storm, but snow fell faster and for longer than they could manage. Tractor-trailers began jackknifing on the highway about 8:30 a.m. Monday, state police said, causing motorists to lose control and other trucks to jackknife to avoid collisions. Disabled vehicles and tractor-trailers blocked exits, and VDOT officially closed the highway about 8 a.m. Tuesday to avoid other motorists from trying to enter and to help others make their way off the highway.
“I do believe that VDOT was prepared prior to this storm,” Parker said. “We got more snow than what was initially predicted, and the rate was falling harder. Could we have kept up with a snowfall rate of that amount? No.”
Story continues below advertisement
She said VDOT didn’t pretreat the portion of the highway because rain that preceded the sleet and snow would have washed it away. Even so, Kelly Hannon, VDOT’s communications manager for the Fredericksburg District, said the agency apologized for the “very stressful, scary situations” and would take an “exhaustive look” at what happened.
Advertisement
A state police spokeswoman said the agency had received no reports of deaths or injuries due to the massive backups.
The Fredericksburg area received about 12 inches of snow Monday, and officials said they hoped to reopen the interstate later tonight.
D.C. region races to restore power, dig out icy roads a day after big snowstorm
The mess along I-95 — one of the nation’s busiest highways — resulted from a winter storm Monday that walloped the Washington area and parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern U.S., triggering power outages, closing government agencies, schools and coronavirus testing centers.
Drone video captured on Jan. 4 shows cars stuck for miles on I-95 in Virginia after a snowstorm caused icy conditions and multiple crashes. (Paul Frendach via Storyful)
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) said Tuesday that he hoped to have the highway reopen by Tuesday night and that emergency crews were using highway express lanes to reach stranded motorists and get them to warming shelters.
Story continues below advertisement
“It’s warming up a bit. The sun is out,” Northam said in an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday. “I anticipate that we’ll get to these folks today and hopefully by tonight we’ll have Interstate 95 open again.”
He said he had the National Guard on standby but had not deployed it because the challenge is not one of manpower or tow trucks and other equipment, but reaching vehicles.
State Police and transportation officials took to the air to monitor progress because highway traffic cameras went dark amid power outages, Northam said, adding that Dominion Energy has made restoration of the cameras “a top priority.” While expressing sympathy for stranded motorists, Northam said more should have heeded warnings to stay off the roads.
“We gave warnings and people need to pay attention to these warnings, and the less people that are on the highways when these storms hit, the better,” he said. “I feel for these people that are stranded but just want to let them know we’re doing everything we can to get to them in a very challenging situation.”
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
But some motorists said they aren’t to blame for what they saw as poor planning.
Ronni Schorr, a 59-year-old marketing executive, said the highway became a “sheet of ice” amid abandoned tractor trailers when reaching Fredericksburg about 7 p.m. Monday while she, her husband, and their Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Ella, headed home to New York from a Miami getaway. A tractor-trailer blocked the nearest exit ramp, she said.
Schorr said Virginia officials were “not at all” prepared, and she didn’t see plows until Tuesday morning. She said they finally exited the highway after 14 hours, weaving around vehicles stuck in the median, after a plow cleared an exit ramp on the other side of the highway.
Story continues below advertisement
“I’m not angry at the snow,” Schorr said. “I’m just upset at the way they handled it.”
Most frustrating, she said, was the lack of communication from state and local officials as she and her husband took turns catnapping overnight in their Mazda.
Advertisement
Finally, on Tuesday morning, they received a push alert on their phones from Virginia.
“In a world today when everybody’s got their cellphones with them, there was no information, there was nothing,” Schorr said. “If they were able to send an alert out this morning, why couldn’t they do that yesterday?”
Multiple crashes and icy conditions on Jan. 4 left hundreds of drivers stuck overnight on I-95 outside Fredericksburg, Va. (Susan Phalen via Storyful)
By Tuesday morning, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) was 21 hours into a normally two-hour drive from Richmond to the U.S. Capitol. He said he was inching toward the exit for the Stafford airport, sleep-deprived and subsisting on two cups of coffee and a Dr Pepper he had picked up at a gas station in Fredericksburg, where he had refueled before traffic again came to a standstill.
Story continues below advertisement
Kaine said he left Richmond about 1 p.m. Monday for a pressing voting-rights meeting later that day. Traffic would stop for five or six hours, then move slowly for a time, and stop again.
Overnight, stranded in below-freezing temperatures, he said he would heat the car as much as he could, then turn the engine off for an hour to conserve fuel while he tried to sleep.
“I would nap for 15 or 20 minutes — usually I’d wake up because I got too cold,” he said.
Advertisement
Overnight, he said, a man traveling with his family from Florida back home to Connecticut walked car-to-car delivering souvenir Florida oranges to him and other hungry people who hadn’t eaten.
“There was a lot of good neighborly spirit last night,” he said, later tweeting that he was still on the road 27 hours later.
Story continues below advertisement
Kaine said he spoke to Northam while his staff contacted VDOT, asking what people were supposed to do if they run out of gas or need help. He ticked off the phone number the state gave him to share with people: 1-800-FOR-ROAD. Motorists with an emergency were told to stay in their vehicles and call 911, VDOT said.
Incoming Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) called on officials to deploy the Virginia National Guard to help rescue those stranded, calling the situation “untenable.”
Advertisement
“Travelers are trapped — some for nearly 24 hours,” Gilbert said in a statement. “But now isn’t the time to place blame for what went wrong. It’s time to get help to those in need.”
On social media, people shared their stories of being trapped on the highway, including families with kids, while one person pleaded for help after being stuck more than 18 hours without insulin.
Josh Lederman, a correspondent for NBC, said on a news report Tuesday from his vehicle that he had been stuck with his dog on the highway overnight as they tried to get back to Washington. He said traffic stopped about 8 p.m. near Stafford and he had barely moved since.
“Once it got to be 9 p.m. or 10 p.m., I realized we were going to be here all night long,” he said. He had some food for his dog and only a few granola bars and gum for himself.
He said some motorists collected snow in containers, hoping it would melt to have water for kids and pets. Other stranded drivers got out to walk their dogs along the highway’s shoulder.
Advertisement
“It’s 26 degrees and there’s no way anyone can get to you,” Lederman said. He said people were scrolling through social media, trying to get information on the backup, but it was a “mystery of how long it was going to last.”
D.C.-area forecast: Sunshine bursts back today before another chance of snow Thursday night
Colson said they escaped the highway about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, after traffic started to move and they reached an exit in the Ladysmith area for gas and food. By 1:45 p.m., they had returned home to Farmville, scrapping their New York trip after missing the funeral.
Her mother, Cordelia Whitehead, 56, said she was grateful to be off I-95.
“I didn’t think we were going to make it,” Whitehead said. “I just said, ‘Thank you Jesus.’”
Ellie Silverman, Teo Armus and Laura Vozzella contributed to this report.