Across Virginia
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Hundreds of people were trapped on an icy stretch of Interstate 95 in Virginia this week, but after Andrew Peters of Richmond finally made it home, he was hit with a giant Uber bill.
Peters was returning from San Francisco and didn’t understand the severity of the situation when he took an Uber from Dulles International Airport and got stuck in the traffic disaster, WTOP-FM reported.
“It was kind of scary,” Peters said. “We didn’t have any food or water.”
Hundreds of motorists were stranded in freezing temperatures along a 40-mile stretch of I-95. Police said part of became impassable when tractor-trailers jackknifed in a winter storm. The interstate fully reopened Tuesday night after more than a day of blockage.
After a nine-hour trek, Peters got home and paid a $200 bill. But then Peters said Uber added $400, raising his total bill to $600. He is disputing the additional charge.
According to Uber’s website, “heavy traffic may cause your trip to take longer than expected and to compensate your driver for the additional time, your fare may change.”
Photo: AP
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia officials defending their response to a blizzard that stranded hundreds of motorists along a major interstate highway said conditions for the gridlock were caused by a combination of unusually heavy snowfall, plunging temperatures and a rainy start that kept them from pretreating the roads.
There were no reported deaths or injuries from the calamity on Interstate 95, one of the nations busiest highways, but plenty of outrage from motorists, some of whom were stranded overnight Monday into Tuesday, posting pleas for help on social media.
“We all need to be clear that this was an incredibly unusual event,” Gov. Ralph Northam said at a news conference, adding that he could understand drivers’ “frustration and fear.”
Problems began Monday morning, when a truck jackknifed on Interstate 95 between Richmond and Washington, triggering a chain reaction as other vehicles lost control, state police said.
“That was entirely too much for us to keep up with,” she told reporters. “Consequently, with the amount of traffic that we had on the interstate, the trucks and the cars couldn’t make it up and down the hills because we had too much snow and ice out there.”
Lanes in both directions eventually became blocked along an approximately 40-mile stretch of I-95 between Richmond and Washington, D.C. As hours passed and night fell, motorists posted messages on social media about running out of fuel, food and water.
Truck driver Emily Slaughter said she was driving from New Jersey to Georgia to deliver vegetables to a FedEx facility and became stranded for five hours on the southbound side of I-95. She said everything on the road was fine until she hit Virginia.
“All of a sudden you could no longer see lines. It got a little scary there,” she said.
Meera Rao and her husband, Raghavendra, were driving home after visiting their daughter in North Carolina when they got stuck Monday evening. They were only 100 feet past an exit but could not move for roughly 16 hours.
“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?”
Northam defended his decision not to activate the Virginia National Guard or declare a state of emergency.
He said the issue facing state crews was not a lack of manpower but the difficulty of getting workers and equipment through the snow and ice to where they needed to be. And he said a state of emergency, which would typically be declared hours or days before an event to create extra flexibility in responding, would have done no good.
Up to 11 inches (28 cm) of snow fell in the area during Monday’s blizzard, according to the National Weather Service, and state police had warned people to avoid driving unless absolutely necessary, especially as colder nighttime temperatures set in.
Two independent forecasting experts offered differing opinions on how much the intensity of the snowfall cited by state transportation officials could be blamed for the traffic pileup.
Judah Cohen, a winter storm expert for Atmospheric Environmental Research, a commercial firm outside of Boston, said other areas respond to even more intense accumulations without traffic disasters.
“I know of snowfall rates of 5 to 6 inches per hour and without the traffic nightmare we just saw,” he said in an email, adding: “I do think a few more inches fell than predicted in total but not enough to overwhelm the system.”
Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini, however, said in an email that when snow falls at more than two inches per hour, “it is pretty difficult for most locations to keep up, especially if they lack infrastructure.”
Because the storm began with rain, crews could not pretreat the roads because the salt or chemicals would have washed away, officials said. Some traffic cameras were also knocked out by power outages. And Parker said the interstate’s express lanes were not of much use to clear the logjams, given the location of the traffic backups.
Crews worked throughout the day to clear the roadway, and traffic spilled out onto secondary roads, causing additional delays.
It took until around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday for the Virginia Department of Transportation announce it had reopened the interstate after its crews ensured all stranded motorists made it off the highway and then cleared abandoned vehicles and plowed the stretch.
Officials never provided an estimate of the number of vehicles that tied up in the jam. Photos showed they numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands.
Kelly Hannon, a spokeswoman for the transportation department, apologized to motorists for the I-95 logjam and said the department would take an “exhaustive look” at the incident.
The storm also left passengers on an Amtrak train stranded in Virginia. Amtrak’s Crescent left New Orleans on Sunday on its way to New York and got stuck near Lynchburg on Monday morning, when downed trees blocked the tracks.
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Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman in College Park, Maryland; Seth Borenstein in Washington and Julie Walker in New York contributed to this report.
Photo: AP
The massive backups and miles of stranded motorists in northern Virginia two nights ago might remind many drivers here of some of their worse snow-related delays — but this one may have topped them all. Thousands of drivers were stranded over a 40-mile stretch of I-95 between Fredericksburg and Washington D.C., many of them for more than 24 hours. Governor Northam came under heavy criticism from some quarters for not calling out the National Guard to help reach the stranded and clear the roadway. The governor says he opted not to because manpower was not the issue –instead, he says, it was the inability to get rescuers to where they needed to be. There have been some big-time weather-related backups and standstills over the years on Interstate 81, but this one is clearly among the absolute worst ever in Virginia. More from WFIR’s Evan Jones:
ESPN NFL insider Field Yates is reporting The Washington Football Team will unveil its new name and logo on February 2nd.
CHESTERFIELD, Va. (AP) — A Virginia man who stopped by a convenience store to buy his kids chocolate milk also bought $1 million scratch-off lottery ticket. WRIC reported Sunday that Dennis Willoughby of Chesterfield County bought the ticket at a 7-Eleven right before Christmas. He decided to buy the ticket while he was in the store. The Virginia Lottery said he chose to receive a one-time cash payout instead of annual payments over 30 years. That makes the north Chesterfield County dad $640,205 richer. There is one more unclaimed top-prize winner in the $1 million Platinum Jackpot game, the state lottery said. The odds of winning it are 1 in 1,632,000.
MGN
Roanoke County, VA—January 1, 2022) Roanoke County Fire and Rescue responded at approximately 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 1, 2022 to the 5700 block of Crystal Creek Drive, in the Cave Spring area, for the report of a residential structure fire. First arriving crews from Roanoke County Station 3 (Cave Spring) found smoke showing from the roof a one story, wood -sided, single family home. The fire was put out in 45 minutes. The house was not occupied at the time of the fire and there were no injuries. No one will be displaced as this house was a rental property that was not currently occupied.The fire on Crystal Creek Drive yesterday was accidental in nature and caused by electrical wiring in the disconnect box that serviced the air handler in the attic. The fire was contained to the attic space with heat damage to the room below. There was smoke damage throughout the structure. Damage estimates are $45,000.00.
PRINCE GEORGE, Va. (AP) — Authorities in Virginia say that a second person has died following a shooting at a New Year’s Eve bonfire party in Prince George County.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the shooting occurred about 12:30 a.m. Saturday.
Prince George police said that officers responded to the report of a shooting at an outdoor party that was estimated to have had more than 200 people in attendance.
Police said they found two gunshot victims laying on a grassy field. Tramaz Tynes, 20, of Surry County, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police said Saturday afternoon that a second victim who’d been taken to a hospital died of his injuries. He was identified as Devon Clanton, 22, of Dinwiddie County.
The crowd at the party began to disperse as police officers arrived. But police said they’re confident that there are people who witnessed the shooting and urged them to come forward with information.
No arrests have been made so far.
CHESTERFIELD, Va. (AP) — Police in central Virginia say they’re investigating a road-rage shooting that sent a person to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Chesterfield County police said in a news release that the incident occurred late Friday afternoon on the 108000 block of Midlothian Turnpike.
Police said the person who was shot had been driving when a silver vehicle pulled up along the passenger side and fired a single shot at the victim’s car. Police said they believe the victim experienced a road rage incident with the suspect before the shooting.
Chesterfield County police urge anyone with information to contact them at 804-748-1251 or through Crime Solvers at 804-748-0660 or through the P3 app.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia has launched a statewide Mortgage Relief Program to help homeowners who’ve been financially impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Ralph Northam announced the new program on Thursday. He said the state has received more than $250 million through the U.S. Department of the Treasury to provide relief.
Applications for the assistance will open up on Monday.
The program will be similar to Virginia’s Rent Relief Program which has provided more than $500 million in assistance to more than 75,000 households. The governor’s office said that families with children made up the majority of recipients.
“Virginia is taking aggressive steps to help people stay in their homes,” the Democratic governor said. “Owning a home is the American dream, and this new program will help keep that dream alive.”
Eligible homeowners must have experienced a reduction of income or increase in living expenses after January 21, 2020, the state said. They also must currently own and occupy the property as their primary residence. There also are maximum income limits and other eligibility requirements.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia’s unemployment rate has fallen significantly since the coronavirus pandemic had shut down much of the economy last year. But the state’s labor force is still slightly smaller than what it was before the pandemic began.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Wednesday that the state’s unemployment rate peaked at 11.3% in April 2020. The rate fell to 3.4% by November of this year.
At the same time, the number of people who are working or actively looking for work in Virginia has not fully recovered. The state’s workforce was at 63% in November. It was at 66% before the pandemic began.
Some have blamed labor shortages on the enhanced unemployment benefits that were offered through summer 2021. But a report from Old Dominion University said numerous factors are likely at play.
Those factors include child care availability, health concerns regarding the coronavirus and people transitioning from one type of work to another. There’s also been an uptick in the number of people who are retiring.