(Washington) Many motorists were still stranded Tuesday morning on a highway in the northeastern United States, with some spending nearly 24 hours in their vehicles after the winter storm that blanketed the region in snow and caused numerous falls. 'trees ..
An 86-kilometer section of the I-95 freeway, leading to the U.S. capital Washington, was closed on Tuesday, as authorities tried to make roads obstructed by tree trunks, immobilized trucks, piles of snow and more. patches of ice.
"We know that many travelers have been stranded for a very long time on the I-95 freeway in the past 24 hours," a representative of the Virginia Department of Transportation said Tuesday, saying in a statement that the situation was "without previous ".
“We've been stuck there for 12 hours,” an American, Jeff, told Instagram Tuesday morning. The wintry sun that replaced Monday's storm did not free the trucks and cars stranded around it.
In the freezing night of Monday to Tuesday, this Net surfer told between two trucks “to be blocked in the belly of the beast I-95” after having traversed 40 km in 12 hours. "It's okay, we have some food and water," he told his followers.
Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, former Hillary Clinton running mate in 2016, was also among the drivers stuck on this route, deemed one of the worst in the country under normal circumstances.
"I started my trip (to Washington), which normally takes two hours, at 1 p.m. yesterday. Nineteen hours later, I am still far from the Capitol ”, where the American elected officials sit, he tweeted Tuesday morning with a photo of his car stuck behind three trucks.
"Be careful, everyone," said the former governor of Virginia.
Affected families
"We slept in our car while it was freezing" by about -5 ° C, Kyle Oland, a father, said on Instagram on Tuesday, saying he was stranded "for almost 24 hours" on the highway with his wife and her two children.
The family was finally greeted in the middle of the night by a resident near the nearest exit, after a 5 km walk, but "we do not know when we can leave," he added.
Jim DeFede, a Florida-based CBS reporter, recounted on Twitter that he himself had been stranded for more than 20 hours and had not seen any highway workers or tow trucks pass for 12 hours.
"All residents of Virginia should continue to avoid I-95," tweeted Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, who assures us that his crews have been working "through the night" and are continuing their efforts to clear the highway and offer heated shelters to the castaways of the road.
The storm that hit the region on Monday deposited about twenty centimeters of snow, paralyzing the capital Washington and notably blocking President Joe Biden in his Air Force One plane for half an hour.
Nearly 255,000 homes remained without power in Virginia on Tuesday, along with tens of thousands more in neighboring Maryland, according to the Power Outage site.