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.
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.
