Snow, crash strand some Virginia drivers for 24 hours
RICHMOND, Va. — There was no food, water or sleep for Susan Phalen as she spent a frigid night inside her car stopped on Interstate 95 in Virginia. Meera Rao and her husband were only 100 feet past an exit but were unable to move for 16 hours.
Sen. Tim Kaine was on his way to Washington when a seemingly simple commute stretched into a 21-hour ordeal that became “a kind of survival project.”
They were among hundreds of people who got stranded on the East Coast’s main north-south highway in freezing temperatures after a winter storm snarled traffic and left some drivers stuck in place for as much as a full day.
The problems began Monday morning when a truck jackknifed on I-95, triggering a chain reaction as other vehicles lost control, state police said. Eventually lanes in both directions became blocked across a 40-mile stretch of the highway between Richmond and the nation’s capital at a time when snow was falling around 2 inches an hour.
Hundreds of motorists spent the night in their vehicles, worrying about a lack of food, fuel and water as temperatures fell into the teens.
There were no reports of serious injuries or deaths, but there was plenty of anger among drivers.
“No one came. It was just shocking,” said Rao, who was traveling home to Burtonsville, Maryland, after visiting her daughter in North Carolina when she got stuck Monday evening. “Being in the most advanced country in the world, no one knew how to even clear one lane for all of us to get out of that mess?”
It took until Tuesday evening around 8:30 p.m. for the Virginia Department of Transportation to reopen the interstate.