Hundreds of motorists and families were trapped on a frozen US highway for up to 24 hours on Monday, with some reportedly begging for food.
Virginia’s state government is facing outrage and demands for answers after a winter snowstorm caused the traffic disaster, with some motorists still reporting being stuck on the Interstate-95 as of Tuesday afternoon (Wednesday morning AEDT).
The I-95 is the main north-south highway along the east coast of the US, running all the way from New England to Florida.
New Jersey father-of-two Joseph Catalano, returning from a post-Christmas family trip to Disney World in Orlando, told Fox News he had only managed to move 50km in 12 hours.
He said he was furious at officials, describing it as a “complete failure by the entire state of Virginia”.
“They let you go right into the mess,” he told Fox News after making it to Maryland at midday on Tuesday.
“And once you got into that mess, there was no turning back.
“We had absolutely no idea what we were going into. You had all these fancy signs on the highway [saying] ‘mask up, mask up’, ‘save lives, mask up’. Turn the signs on and say ‘turn around’, you know, ‘50-mile backup’, something.”
He added, “I don’t know where the management comes from. I don’t know how they are not prepared for something like this. It wasn’t just black ice. It was this thick layer where my son said, ‘Dad this would be awesome, I could go ice skating on it.’
“This morning the only way you could get by was the tracks from the regular cars. You still didn’t see plows. And there are just six, eight, ten inches of snow on the lines in between the lanes, not even touched.”
CBS Miami reporter Jim DeFede posted a series of updates from his car while stuck in the traffic.
“It’s almost 10am, which means I’ve been in the car for 24 hours,” he said in a video on Twitter.
“I left New York at 10am yesterday, it’s now 10am Tuesday.
“I’ve been in the same spot in Virginia, just south of Quantico, for at least 17, almost 18 hours, and I just got an alert on my phone from the Virginia Department of Transportation saying, ‘I-95 drivers, state and locals coming ASAP with supplies and to move you.’ I am not reassured by this message.”
“This is a complete parking lot, and the road is just nothing but ice,” he said.
“I don’t know who’s in charge, but somebody better do something because there are cars and families just trapped here.
“And it’s not very nice outside. According to my car it’s 19 degrees (-7C) outside, so all I’ve been doing is just running the engine for about an hour then turning it off. I’ve got a little over half a tank of gas left.”
One good Samaritan was filmed taking bread from a truck to hand out to hungry families.
“We’ve been looking on social media, we know a lot of people have been stuck out here – some for up to 24 hours,” the Maryland man told DeFede.
“Me and my wife have been sitting behind a Schmidt Baking truck. She contacted them, told them the situation, and the owner of the truck told the driver to open it up and start handing out food to people.”
Also among those stuck was Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s former running mate.
“I started my normal two hour drive to D.C. at 1pm yesterday. Nineteen hours later, I’m still not near the Capitol,” he tweeted.
The Virginia Department of Transportation told local media the agency was caught off-guard by the heavy snowstorm, which saw more than 5cm of snow an hour fall for up to five hours.
“That was entirely too much for us to keep up with,” VDOT engineer Marcie Parker said on a media call, The Virginia Mercury reported.
“Could we have kept up with the snowfall rate of that amount? No. Pretty much when it gets over an inch an hour, we have a hard time.”
Ms Parker said the stretch of highway where people became stranded were not pre-treated because the storm started with rain.
“If we pre-treat, the rain just washes it away,” she said. “So we’re really just wasting product and wasting money and interrupting the traffic flow.”
Asked if the government wanted to apologise, she said, “We really understand that people face very scary, stressful situations. And we do apologise and we‘ll be taking an exhaustive look at this incident.”
She added that one of the problems clearing the road now was that some people had simply abandoned their vehicles.
An NBC News meteorologist accused Virginia officials of not doing enough beforehand.
“Forecast was as accurate as it gets 12 hrs before it started,” Bill Karins wrote on Twitter. “If I-95 in Virginia doesn’t have the plow/salt capabilities for 8-14 inches (20cm-35cm) of snow it should have been pre-emptively closed.”
In a tweet on Tuesday afternoon, VDOT said it was “making significant headway to remove disabled vehicles, and tractor-trailers from I-95 then plow trains will come through to remove snow and ice”.
Sections of the highway remain closed.
Real-time updates on Google Maps continue to show ongoing traffic-related issues on roads starting on I-95 in Ruther Glen – just north of Richmond – all the way up to exits at the Pentagon.
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