RICHMOND — Gov. Ralph Northam on Thursday said he was praising state emergency workers who’d responded to an icy disaster on Interstate 95 — and not trying to blame motorists who had been trapped on the highway for more than a day — in a testy response during a radio interview a day earlier.
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“I have a tremendous amount of compassion for those folks who got stuck in some very scary situations, a lot of them had children, and I’ve heard a lot of the stories,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. “So I’m not blaming anybody.”
Northam (D) drew criticism on social media after his annoyed answer to WRVA’s Matt Demlein, who had asked if the state had determined “what went wrong” regarding the emergency, in which a foot of snow quite literally froze one of the nation’s busiest stretches of highway, leaving many motorists stranded in frigid temperatures for more than 24 hours — including Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
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“I am getting sick and tired of people talking about what went wrong,” Northam shot back. The remark drew a flurry of criticism on Twitter, where some critical context was lost; Northam was contending that front-line state crews did a lot of things right and avoided deaths and injuries, not that the state was blameless.
Adding fuel to the fire: Northam also expressed exasperation with motorists who’d ignored the storm forecast and the state’s pleas to stay off the roads.
“Why don’t you start asking some of these individuals that were out on the highway for hours: … ’Why did you feel it was so important to drive through such a snowstorm?’” he said.
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Northam also expressed sympathy for those who had been trapped later in the interview, but WRVA did not include that in the short clip initially posted on its website. It later added a second clip with those remarks.
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“Goodness gracious, @RalphNortham,” tweeted Garren Shipley, spokesman for incoming state House Speaker C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah). “This is not a good look.”
The backlash on social media swirled as the state braced for another winter storm, creating a headache for a governor already juggling the aftermath of the I-95 crisis and a resurgent coronavirus in the final days of his four-year term.
Northam’s remarks on the radio drew attention in part because he rarely shows anger in public. A folksy Eastern Shore native, he typically has the demeanor of a soft-spoken pediatrician, his job before he assumed the Executive Mansion.
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Even as Northam pushed back against the reporter’s question about “what went wrong,” he soon caught himself, saying, “I hate to vent on you right now.”
The story went out on WRVA’s website under a headline — “‘Sick and Tired of People Talking About What Went Wrong,’ Governor Ralph Northam Angrily Responds to Question Over I95 Backup” — that could be read to mean that Northam had no interest in reviewing the state’s response.
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In his interview with The Post, Northam said he welcomes a review, including into whether state officials could have shut down the highway sooner or communicated better with motorists.
Communication has never been a strong suit for Northam, who hands the office over to Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) on Jan. 15. His muddled remarks about a late-term abortion bill in early 2019 gave Republicans an opening to accuse him of advocating infanticide — a charge he called “disgusting.” It precipitated a second crisis involving a racist photo on his 1984 medical school yearbook page. His conflicting accounts about whether he was in the photo — which showed one person in blackface and another under a Ku Klux Klan hood — only intensified calls for his resignation.
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But Northam weathered the episodes and, with a newly blue General Assembly, wound up delivering a host of long-stalled Democratic priorities.
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Amid the current flap, state officials continued to face questions about the state’s handling of the highway emergency, with U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) speaking with reporters Thursday morning about both the I-95 debacle and an Amtrak train that stalled in Lynchburg for more than a day due to fallen trees. Warner called it “inexcusable” that officials did not better communicate with people who were stranded and in need of help.
“We can’t prevent storms. We can’t prevent jackknifing of trucks. We can’t prevent trees falling on a railroad track. But we sure as hell ought to be able to make sure we can communicate with people when they are caught and in need and give them more timely updated information,” Warner said. “And in both situations, that didn’t seem to be the case.”
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Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), whose district includes a large portion of I-95, joined calls for the state to investigate what went wrong and how the Virginia Department of Transportation could have improved its response and is asking that the results be made public.
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At a news briefing Thursday morning, state Transportation Secretary Shannon Valentine called the events that led to extensive backups on the interstate “distressing” and said a multiagency review is underway to look at the precise timeline of what took place.
Valentine said the investigation will be able to determine what was done well and “what we need to do better going forward.” She did not say give a timeline for when the review will be completed and a report readied.
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A second snowstorm Thursday night into Friday morning is likely to exacerbate the problems remaining from Monday, as thousands of residents remain without power and many local roads still unplowed. Virginia police, emergency and transportation officials said they were doubling down response efforts, with the Virginia National Guard deploying 50 soldiers and airmen to help with debris removal in Northern and Southwest Virginia.
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As of Thursday, crews still working to clear local streets were shifting to pretreating the interstates and other primary and high-volume roadways ahead of a storm expected to dump three to four inches on the I-95 corridor overnight.
Stephen C. Brich, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Transportation, said because the upcoming storm is expected to start as a snow event, crews can pretreat the roadways. The timing of this storm — expected to hit the corridor between 11 p.m. Thursday and 3 a.m. Friday — should help. Even so, a chorus of government leaders in Virginia are imploring residents to brace themselves for more potentially disruptive weather and to stay off the roads.
Even a modest accumulation of snow overnight could lead to treacherous commutes, numerous accidents and delays, unsettling the region already on edge. Monday’s storm dumped about a foot of snow in portions of Virginia.
Meagan Flynn contributed to this report.