Stranded Marine recounts 'losing hope' while trapped in I-95 backup
By
Mark Puleo, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Jan 5, 2022 2:26 PM EDT
|
Updated Jan 5, 2022 2:26 PM EDT
Stranded U.S. Marine Isaac Arcos says several people abandoned their cars along Interstate 95 in Virginia after a snowstorm brought traffic to a standstill for hours, creating confusion and delays.
United States Marine Isaac Arcos was just 50 miles away from the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia on Monday night. Those 50 miles would take him nearly nine hours to complete.
"It was kind of like losing hope," he recounted to Reuters.
Arcos was driving back to the base from his home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, – a trip that typically takes five to six hours on average. This week, it took nearly 14 hours.
The Marine was one of the hundreds of drivers trapped in standstill traffic on Interstate 95 in Virginia overnight Monday into Tuesday. The endless backup began when a semi-truck jackknifed amid heavy snowfall, causing a chain reaction of vehicles to lose control. The heavy traffic around the accidents eventually led to gridlock as emergency responders struggled to reach the scene.
As more and more trucks became disabled on the highway, the hours in traffic mounted and drivers like Arcos could only sit in despair.
"Everybody just turned off their vehicles almost at once and I reached that point, I too found myself doing that," he said. "I fell asleep and I quickly woke up... expecting someone to be on the horn, and then I realized 'Hey, an hour has passed and we haven't even moved. No one else has turned on their vehicles.'"
As he watched his gas gauge slowly drift toward empty, Arcos realized that he hadn’t refilled on fuel since North Carolina. And Quantico, located about 40 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., wasn’t getting any closer.
With temperatures plunging lower and lower during the nighttime hours, he began to get worried as he watched his gas tank slowly empty.
After seeing 110 miles until empty on the odometer before the traffic, he said the reading got all the way down to 34 miles until empty. Throughout the night, he had to set alarms on his phone clock to juggle staying warm and conserving gas.
"My vehicle has poor insulation, so I'd have to turn on my car maybe every hour or maybe every half hour," he said. "I had my alarms for 30-minute intervals just so I can remind myself, 'Hey, it's getting cold.' I only have so much warming layers, and at the time I think it was about 20 degrees outside ... it would get very cold in my car very fast."
According to Arcos, the lowest emotional point of the ordeal for him was realizing just how long he was going to be stuck. Looking out his window, he saw four-wheelers drive by, and it made him jealous that there was nothing he could do in his vehicle.
Pushing his driver's seat all the way back, all he could do was throw the car in park, turn off the vehicle and accept his fate.
"I put maybe eight different alarms for my phone to wake me up... and that was kind of my like 'I give up, I'm not going to fight it, I'm going to accept the fact that I'm here for this amount of time,'" he said.
At one point, he hopped out of his car to shoot a video of the icy nightmare and almost immediately slipped on the thick ice ahead of his car. For him, that "was like an aha moment," as he realized why everybody was so reluctant to move forward in hazardous conditions.
When he did finally get moving once again on Tuesday, shortly before noon, he told Reuters that he really wished he and other drivers had received more help from the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Hundreds of motorists were stranded on I-95 in Virginia from Monday, Jan. 3, into Tuesday, Jan. 4, after a major winter storm dumped heavy snow on the region. (Storyful/Susan Phalen)
Susan Phalen via Storyful
"I don't think they've (VDOT) done a good job whatsoever," he said. "I felt like they could have prepared if they knew about the weather and from my understanding, they knew about it maybe 14 to 18 hours ahead of time. They definitely could have salted the roads. Or maybe even, yeah, you know, maybe shut down the highways there."
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam defended his state's response to the blizzard and highway conditions, urging motorists and residents to understand that it was an incredibly unusual event, while adding that he understood the fear and frustration from the trapped drivers, The Associated Press reported.
According to Northam, who did not activate the Virginia National Guard or declare a state of emergency, the largest issues facing emergency crews were the weather conditions, namely the difficulty of getting workers and equipment through the snow and ice.
According to officials, because the storm began with falling rain, crews could not treat the roads with salt or chemicals because they would have washed away.
However, other motorists, like Meera Rao, told the AP that the lack of communication and attention from state officials heightened her frustration throughout the ordeal.
“Not one police (officer) came in the 16 hours we were stuck,” she said. “No one came. It was just shocking. 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?”
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.
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News / Winter Weather
Stranded Marine recounts 'losing hope' while trapped in I-95 backup
By Mark Puleo, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Jan 5, 2022 2:26 PM EDT | Updated Jan 5, 2022 2:26 PM EDT
Stranded U.S. Marine Isaac Arcos says several people abandoned their cars along Interstate 95 in Virginia after a snowstorm brought traffic to a standstill for hours, creating confusion and delays.
United States Marine Isaac Arcos was just 50 miles away from the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia on Monday night. Those 50 miles would take him nearly nine hours to complete.
"It was kind of like losing hope," he recounted to Reuters.
Arcos was driving back to the base from his home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, – a trip that typically takes five to six hours on average. This week, it took nearly 14 hours.
The Marine was one of the hundreds of drivers trapped in standstill traffic on Interstate 95 in Virginia overnight Monday into Tuesday. The endless backup began when a semi-truck jackknifed amid heavy snowfall, causing a chain reaction of vehicles to lose control. The heavy traffic around the accidents eventually led to gridlock as emergency responders struggled to reach the scene.
As more and more trucks became disabled on the highway, the hours in traffic mounted and drivers like Arcos could only sit in despair.
"Everybody just turned off their vehicles almost at once and I reached that point, I too found myself doing that," he said. "I fell asleep and I quickly woke up... expecting someone to be on the horn, and then I realized 'Hey, an hour has passed and we haven't even moved. No one else has turned on their vehicles.'"
As he watched his gas gauge slowly drift toward empty, Arcos realized that he hadn’t refilled on fuel since North Carolina. And Quantico, located about 40 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., wasn’t getting any closer.
With temperatures plunging lower and lower during the nighttime hours, he began to get worried as he watched his gas tank slowly empty.
After seeing 110 miles until empty on the odometer before the traffic, he said the reading got all the way down to 34 miles until empty. Throughout the night, he had to set alarms on his phone clock to juggle staying warm and conserving gas.
"My vehicle has poor insulation, so I'd have to turn on my car maybe every hour or maybe every half hour," he said. "I had my alarms for 30-minute intervals just so I can remind myself, 'Hey, it's getting cold.' I only have so much warming layers, and at the time I think it was about 20 degrees outside ... it would get very cold in my car very fast."
According to Arcos, the lowest emotional point of the ordeal for him was realizing just how long he was going to be stuck. Looking out his window, he saw four-wheelers drive by, and it made him jealous that there was nothing he could do in his vehicle.
Pushing his driver's seat all the way back, all he could do was throw the car in park, turn off the vehicle and accept his fate.
"I put maybe eight different alarms for my phone to wake me up... and that was kind of my like 'I give up, I'm not going to fight it, I'm going to accept the fact that I'm here for this amount of time,'" he said.
At one point, he hopped out of his car to shoot a video of the icy nightmare and almost immediately slipped on the thick ice ahead of his car. For him, that "was like an aha moment," as he realized why everybody was so reluctant to move forward in hazardous conditions.
When he did finally get moving once again on Tuesday, shortly before noon, he told Reuters that he really wished he and other drivers had received more help from the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Hundreds of motorists were stranded on I-95 in Virginia from Monday, Jan. 3, into Tuesday, Jan. 4, after a major winter storm dumped heavy snow on the region. (Storyful/Susan Phalen)
"I don't think they've (VDOT) done a good job whatsoever," he said. "I felt like they could have prepared if they knew about the weather and from my understanding, they knew about it maybe 14 to 18 hours ahead of time. They definitely could have salted the roads. Or maybe even, yeah, you know, maybe shut down the highways there."
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam defended his state's response to the blizzard and highway conditions, urging motorists and residents to understand that it was an incredibly unusual event, while adding that he understood the fear and frustration from the trapped drivers, The Associated Press reported.
According to Northam, who did not activate the Virginia National Guard or declare a state of emergency, the largest issues facing emergency crews were the weather conditions, namely the difficulty of getting workers and equipment through the snow and ice.
According to officials, because the storm began with falling rain, crews could not treat the roads with salt or chemicals because they would have washed away.
However, other motorists, like Meera Rao, told the AP that the lack of communication and attention from state officials heightened her frustration throughout the ordeal.
“Not one police (officer) came in the 16 hours we were stuck,” she said. “No one came. It was just shocking. 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?”
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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.
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