Months after disastrous I-95 backup, new report details what went wrong
By
Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Apr 9, 2022 1:27 AM EDT
|
Updated Apr 11, 2022 8:22 AM EDT
A state-commissioned report by an independent consulting firm reviewed how several Virginia agencies responded to the storm and what can be done to prevent that situation from happening in the future.
Even with snow piled on the highway and the post-New Year's traffic stagnant, Alex Smith found herself with little choice but to merge back onto Interstate 95, where she would wait for more than nine hours for crews to clear and redirect the 48-mile stretch of stopped cars.
Despite the winter storm that had slammed the mid-Atlantic on Jan. 3, 2022, the roads on her trip from Charlotte, North Carolina, had been drivable up until Fredericksburg, Virginia.
“[The roads were] perfect all the way here until we hit Fredericksburg, then it was like the roads weren’t plowed, it was like we just hit this city line where there was just no salt, no nothing,” she told AccuWeather National Reporter Jillian Angeline back during January. “Everyone was trying to get off at exits, but the gas stations and the hotels are not plowed, so people were getting stuck just trying to turn into places, so everybody just got back on the highway, because what else are you going to do?”
Smith's experience in trying to break free from I-95 wasn't much different. She had attempted to take a back road that she said she "shouldn't have been on," though her car bottomed out and got stuck before she could go too far. After some passing motorists helped to free her car, she felt there was little choice but to return to the congested highway.
“I thought ‘Well, it may take me a couple more hours, but at least I’ll be safe on the freeway,'" Smith said. "But then we completely stopped.”
A 41-page state-commissioned report released Friday, April 1, reviewed how Virginia agencies responded to the January snowstorm along with the factors that contributed to hundreds of people becoming stranded in a 48-mile stretch of stopped vehicles on I-95 that lasted for over 24 hours.
Hundreds of motorists were stranded on I-95 in Virginia on Monday overnight and into Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022, after a major winter storm dumped heavy snow on the region. (Susan Phalen via Storyful)
Susan Phalen via Storyful
At 11:30 a.m., local time, on Jan. 3, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) said I-95 southbound near exit 136 in Stafford County had closed due to a crash involving multiple tractor-trailers, and the northbound traffic had been reduced to a single lane near exit 140 due to disabled tractor-trailers. Crews were able to reopen the two sites by 5:45 p.m., only to close lanes once more after another crash occurred within the hour.
By 8:10 p.m., travel on both north and southbound lanes in the Fredericksburg area remained at a stop due to disabled vehicles and downed trees. The lanes remained closed overnight as crews worked to clear the vehicles involved in the accidents as well as the additional number of vehicles that had either gotten stuck in the snow or ran out of gasoline.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP
All of the disabled vehicles had been removed from the interstate and the lanes reopened by 8:37 p.m. the following day.
The report, written by the Arlington-based independent consulting firm CNA, concluded that the changing weather, heavy traffic, downed trees and powerlines plus a lack of tow trucks and wreckers severely hampered snowplow operations in the Fredericksburg area.
Drivers wait for the traffic to be cleared as cars and trucks are stranded on sections of Interstate 95 Tuesday Jan. 4, 2022, in Carmel Church, Va. Close to 48 miles of the Interstate was closed due to ice and snow. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
(AP Photo/Steve Helber)
In addition, all of this was exacerbated when key Virginia state agencies such as the VDOT and Virginia State Police (VSP) collectively lost situational awareness and were unable to verify the extent and locations of the backup on I-95 as their information-gathering methods broke down amid power outages, the report concluded. Even while there were alternative ways to gather information that hadn't been impacted by the outages, the agencies were unable to verify and use the unconventional sources.
"With greater situational awareness of the incident across the state, VDOT and VSP could have sooner employed targeted measures, such as blocking ramps leading onto I-95, calling in additional towing resources, sending snowplows against traffic and pulling cars to nearby commuter lots to reduce towing cycle times (rather than towing them to normal locations further away)," the report said.
The VDOT traffic cameras in the Fredericksburg area, the VDOT Fredericksburg District cell towers and VSP communications center -- all tools that the agencies typically rely on to build situational awareness -- became inoperable amid widespread power outages. At one point the storm left about 400,000 Dominion Energy customers without power.
It's not unusual for snow and high winds to down power lines and trees, and in Loisa and Goochland counties, officials noted that tree damage was comparable to that seen during Hurricane Isabel. The report pointed to the heavy rain followed by heavy, wet snowfall as the cause of some areas seeing more trees fall and block roadways than the state had anticipated.
In Fredericksburg, fallen trees on adjacent and secondary roadways soon began slowing VDOT crews' arrivals to the shutdown portions of I-95.
High winds and restraints on resources also meant that aerial reconnaissance, either by small drones or by helicopter, wasn't feasible.
The weather had been hampering efforts to respond to the storm even before the backup. Rain was forecast to hit the area during the early hours of Monday morning, meaning that crews were unable to treat the roads ahead of the snowfall or else the brine solution would wash away. In addition to this, nearly 1.5 inches of rain fell between Jan. 1 and Jan. 2, preventing roadway pre-treatment and softening the ground, according to the report.
Between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 3, the rain continued to fall as the temperatures dropped from 46 degrees Fahrenheit to 36 degrees -- and then the snow began to fall.
Areas around Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania County and Stafford County would all report around 10.8 to 14.6 inches of snowfall in their final snow totals, the report said.
Cars and trucks exit from a section of Interstate 95 Tuesday Jan. 4, 2022, in Stafford, Va. Close to 48 miles of the Interstate was closed due to ice and snow. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
(AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The VDOT had originally planned for large snowfall amounts and a high snowfall rate of 1 to 1.5 inches per hour, with intervals of up to 2 inches per hour, according to the report. Early Jan. 3, they revised their forecast to show a high of 4 to 6 inches of snow across Central Virginia with the potential for a snowfall rate of 1.5 to 3 inches per hour in some areas.
Ahead of the storm, AccuWeather correctly predicted the potential for 6 to 12 inches of snow, with locally higher amounts possible, in parts of eastern Virginia at the center of the storm with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 18 inches. Shannon Airport in Fredericksburg reported 15 inches of snowfall.
AccuWeather forecasters were also calling for snowfall rates of 1 to 3 inches per hour.
Workers remove cars and trucks stranded on sections of Interstate 95 Tuesday Jan. 4, 2022, in Carmel Church, Va. Close to 48 miles of the Interstate was closed due to ice and snow. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
(AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Snowfall rates approached 3 inches per hour for several hours in some areas -- heavier than VDOT District Engineer Marcie Parker told Angeline she could remember seeing in her career.
"We were receiving snowfall at a rate of 2+ inches per hour for 4 to 5 hours," Parker said. "We know that there were still an enormous amount of vehicles that were stuck for many many hours, which we find completely unacceptable for those folks."
Paola Aurich and her family were among those trapped on the highway before they were rerouted to Route 1 off I-95.
"Oh, it was horrible," she told Angeline. "The kids were crying that they were cold, they were hungry…I gave them snacks that I had had in the car but I wasn’t able to get them actual food."
Experts told The Washington Post that food, water, medical aid and gasoline should have been provided after eight hours, at most, though the supplies were never widely distributed since state emergency officials reported they weren't told help was needed.
Meanwhile, Virginia agencies were flooded with calls from stranded motorists and people stuck in traffic continuously posted about their status over social media.
"All night on Twitter it’s just been us that are stuck talking to each other," Smith told Angeline. She recalled one woman who had been driving by herself had told her that she was tired and wanted to sleep, though was concerned traffic would then begin to move.
While the calls to police and social media posts could have aided state agencies in regaining situational awareness over the incident, there were no plans, procedures or policies to guide how they could validate and use these data sources to form a common operational picture, the report said.
As the situation evolved, Tania Pozo found herself with little way to help her daughter, who was caught in the traffic on her way home after the holidays.
"To say, ‘I’m worried,’ is an understatement," Pozo told Angeline. "I’m terrified because normally my daughter travels with a case of bottled water in the car but she’s been home here in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the past three weeks because of the holidays.”
A horse is walked along a section of Interstate 95 Tuesday Jan. 4, 2022, in Carmel Church, Va. Close to 48 miles of the Interstate was closed due to ice and snow. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
(AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Staffing issues due to the COVID-19 omicron variant plus storm-related ground stops resulted in hundreds of flight cancelations at airports, including Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport, prompting holiday travelers to return home via road, the report found.
The additional traffic and the general increase in the volume of tractor-trailers on U.S. interstates due to supply chain demands did no favor to the area's predisposition for heavy traffic, even with state agencies warning people to stay off the roads if possible.
"I can certainly understand that many drivers may have been from out of state and so missed the clear and consistent messaging from VDOT and emergency responders to stay off the roads during the winter storm," then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said in January. "We all need to be clear that this was an incredibly unusual event."
While the report didn't blame an individual agency, it did make a few recommendations to prevent a similar incident from occurring in the future, including for the state to formulate a plan for widespread interstate closures and to include more specific details in emergency alerts and social media posts. It also said that the public has the responsibility to listen to officials and stay off the roads if possible during storms.
Reporting by AccuWeather National Reporters Emmy Victor and Jillian Angeline.
For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform.
Report a Typo
News / Winter Weather
Months after disastrous I-95 backup, new report details what went wrong
By Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Apr 9, 2022 1:27 AM EDT | Updated Apr 11, 2022 8:22 AM EDT
A state-commissioned report by an independent consulting firm reviewed how several Virginia agencies responded to the storm and what can be done to prevent that situation from happening in the future.
Even with snow piled on the highway and the post-New Year's traffic stagnant, Alex Smith found herself with little choice but to merge back onto Interstate 95, where she would wait for more than nine hours for crews to clear and redirect the 48-mile stretch of stopped cars.
Despite the winter storm that had slammed the mid-Atlantic on Jan. 3, 2022, the roads on her trip from Charlotte, North Carolina, had been drivable up until Fredericksburg, Virginia.
“[The roads were] perfect all the way here until we hit Fredericksburg, then it was like the roads weren’t plowed, it was like we just hit this city line where there was just no salt, no nothing,” she told AccuWeather National Reporter Jillian Angeline back during January. “Everyone was trying to get off at exits, but the gas stations and the hotels are not plowed, so people were getting stuck just trying to turn into places, so everybody just got back on the highway, because what else are you going to do?”
Smith's experience in trying to break free from I-95 wasn't much different. She had attempted to take a back road that she said she "shouldn't have been on," though her car bottomed out and got stuck before she could go too far. After some passing motorists helped to free her car, she felt there was little choice but to return to the congested highway.
“I thought ‘Well, it may take me a couple more hours, but at least I’ll be safe on the freeway,'" Smith said. "But then we completely stopped.”
A 41-page state-commissioned report released Friday, April 1, reviewed how Virginia agencies responded to the January snowstorm along with the factors that contributed to hundreds of people becoming stranded in a 48-mile stretch of stopped vehicles on I-95 that lasted for over 24 hours.
Hundreds of motorists were stranded on I-95 in Virginia on Monday overnight and into Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022, after a major winter storm dumped heavy snow on the region. (Susan Phalen via Storyful)
At 11:30 a.m., local time, on Jan. 3, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) said I-95 southbound near exit 136 in Stafford County had closed due to a crash involving multiple tractor-trailers, and the northbound traffic had been reduced to a single lane near exit 140 due to disabled tractor-trailers. Crews were able to reopen the two sites by 5:45 p.m., only to close lanes once more after another crash occurred within the hour.
By 8:10 p.m., travel on both north and southbound lanes in the Fredericksburg area remained at a stop due to disabled vehicles and downed trees. The lanes remained closed overnight as crews worked to clear the vehicles involved in the accidents as well as the additional number of vehicles that had either gotten stuck in the snow or ran out of gasoline.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP
All of the disabled vehicles had been removed from the interstate and the lanes reopened by 8:37 p.m. the following day.
The report, written by the Arlington-based independent consulting firm CNA, concluded that the changing weather, heavy traffic, downed trees and powerlines plus a lack of tow trucks and wreckers severely hampered snowplow operations in the Fredericksburg area.
Drivers wait for the traffic to be cleared as cars and trucks are stranded on sections of Interstate 95 Tuesday Jan. 4, 2022, in Carmel Church, Va. Close to 48 miles of the Interstate was closed due to ice and snow. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
In addition, all of this was exacerbated when key Virginia state agencies such as the VDOT and Virginia State Police (VSP) collectively lost situational awareness and were unable to verify the extent and locations of the backup on I-95 as their information-gathering methods broke down amid power outages, the report concluded. Even while there were alternative ways to gather information that hadn't been impacted by the outages, the agencies were unable to verify and use the unconventional sources.
"With greater situational awareness of the incident across the state, VDOT and VSP could have sooner employed targeted measures, such as blocking ramps leading onto I-95, calling in additional towing resources, sending snowplows against traffic and pulling cars to nearby commuter lots to reduce towing cycle times (rather than towing them to normal locations further away)," the report said.
The VDOT traffic cameras in the Fredericksburg area, the VDOT Fredericksburg District cell towers and VSP communications center -- all tools that the agencies typically rely on to build situational awareness -- became inoperable amid widespread power outages. At one point the storm left about 400,000 Dominion Energy customers without power.
It's not unusual for snow and high winds to down power lines and trees, and in Loisa and Goochland counties, officials noted that tree damage was comparable to that seen during Hurricane Isabel. The report pointed to the heavy rain followed by heavy, wet snowfall as the cause of some areas seeing more trees fall and block roadways than the state had anticipated.
In Fredericksburg, fallen trees on adjacent and secondary roadways soon began slowing VDOT crews' arrivals to the shutdown portions of I-95.
High winds and restraints on resources also meant that aerial reconnaissance, either by small drones or by helicopter, wasn't feasible.
The weather had been hampering efforts to respond to the storm even before the backup. Rain was forecast to hit the area during the early hours of Monday morning, meaning that crews were unable to treat the roads ahead of the snowfall or else the brine solution would wash away. In addition to this, nearly 1.5 inches of rain fell between Jan. 1 and Jan. 2, preventing roadway pre-treatment and softening the ground, according to the report.
Between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 3, the rain continued to fall as the temperatures dropped from 46 degrees Fahrenheit to 36 degrees -- and then the snow began to fall.
Areas around Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania County and Stafford County would all report around 10.8 to 14.6 inches of snowfall in their final snow totals, the report said.
Cars and trucks exit from a section of Interstate 95 Tuesday Jan. 4, 2022, in Stafford, Va. Close to 48 miles of the Interstate was closed due to ice and snow. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The VDOT had originally planned for large snowfall amounts and a high snowfall rate of 1 to 1.5 inches per hour, with intervals of up to 2 inches per hour, according to the report. Early Jan. 3, they revised their forecast to show a high of 4 to 6 inches of snow across Central Virginia with the potential for a snowfall rate of 1.5 to 3 inches per hour in some areas.
Ahead of the storm, AccuWeather correctly predicted the potential for 6 to 12 inches of snow, with locally higher amounts possible, in parts of eastern Virginia at the center of the storm with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 18 inches. Shannon Airport in Fredericksburg reported 15 inches of snowfall.
AccuWeather forecasters were also calling for snowfall rates of 1 to 3 inches per hour.
Workers remove cars and trucks stranded on sections of Interstate 95 Tuesday Jan. 4, 2022, in Carmel Church, Va. Close to 48 miles of the Interstate was closed due to ice and snow. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Snowfall rates approached 3 inches per hour for several hours in some areas -- heavier than VDOT District Engineer Marcie Parker told Angeline she could remember seeing in her career.
"We were receiving snowfall at a rate of 2+ inches per hour for 4 to 5 hours," Parker said. "We know that there were still an enormous amount of vehicles that were stuck for many many hours, which we find completely unacceptable for those folks."
Paola Aurich and her family were among those trapped on the highway before they were rerouted to Route 1 off I-95.
"Oh, it was horrible," she told Angeline. "The kids were crying that they were cold, they were hungry…I gave them snacks that I had had in the car but I wasn’t able to get them actual food."
Experts told The Washington Post that food, water, medical aid and gasoline should have been provided after eight hours, at most, though the supplies were never widely distributed since state emergency officials reported they weren't told help was needed.
Meanwhile, Virginia agencies were flooded with calls from stranded motorists and people stuck in traffic continuously posted about their status over social media.
"All night on Twitter it’s just been us that are stuck talking to each other," Smith told Angeline. She recalled one woman who had been driving by herself had told her that she was tired and wanted to sleep, though was concerned traffic would then begin to move.
While the calls to police and social media posts could have aided state agencies in regaining situational awareness over the incident, there were no plans, procedures or policies to guide how they could validate and use these data sources to form a common operational picture, the report said.
As the situation evolved, Tania Pozo found herself with little way to help her daughter, who was caught in the traffic on her way home after the holidays.
"To say, ‘I’m worried,’ is an understatement," Pozo told Angeline. "I’m terrified because normally my daughter travels with a case of bottled water in the car but she’s been home here in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the past three weeks because of the holidays.”
A horse is walked along a section of Interstate 95 Tuesday Jan. 4, 2022, in Carmel Church, Va. Close to 48 miles of the Interstate was closed due to ice and snow. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Staffing issues due to the COVID-19 omicron variant plus storm-related ground stops resulted in hundreds of flight cancelations at airports, including Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport, prompting holiday travelers to return home via road, the report found.
The additional traffic and the general increase in the volume of tractor-trailers on U.S. interstates due to supply chain demands did no favor to the area's predisposition for heavy traffic, even with state agencies warning people to stay off the roads if possible.
"I can certainly understand that many drivers may have been from out of state and so missed the clear and consistent messaging from VDOT and emergency responders to stay off the roads during the winter storm," then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said in January. "We all need to be clear that this was an incredibly unusual event."
While the report didn't blame an individual agency, it did make a few recommendations to prevent a similar incident from occurring in the future, including for the state to formulate a plan for widespread interstate closures and to include more specific details in emergency alerts and social media posts. It also said that the public has the responsibility to listen to officials and stay off the roads if possible during storms.
Reporting by AccuWeather National Reporters Emmy Victor and Jillian Angeline.
Related:
For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform.
Report a Typo