Road crews struggled to reach hundreds of motorists on Tuesday after they were stranded all night in freezing temperatures along an 80-kilometre stretch of US Interstate 95 in Virginia, where big-rig lorries jackknifed in the ice and snow, state police said.
Both directions of traffic on I-95 came to a standstill on Monday between Ruther Glen, Virginia, in Caroline County and exit 152 in Dumfries, Prince William County, the Virginia Department of Transport said.
At around daybreak on Tuesday, the agency tweeted that “crews will start taking people off at any available interchange to get them".
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said his team responded through the night, sending out emergency messages to connect stranded drivers with help and working with local officials to set up warming shelters as needed.
He said the National Guard was “available” but he had not yet called upon members to help. He also could not say when the situation would be resolved.
“Right now, things aren’t moving, as you know and as you can see on the cameras,” Mr Northam told radio station WTOP on Tuesday.
“We need to get the cars and the trucks off the roads. We need to keep people safe and then we need to clear them.”
Crews were working to remove stopped lorries, plough snow, de-ice the roadway and guide stranded motorists to the nearest exits along the US East Coast’s main north-south motorway, the transport agency said.
By 9am, a single lane of traffic was creeping forward between many stalled lorries and cars in one direction, while people could be seen walking down traffic lanes covered with ice and snow.
The impasse began when a lorry jackknifed in the ice and snow, causing a chain reaction of other commercial vehicles losing control and becoming disabled in the traffic lanes, state police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said on Tuesday.
As the hours passed and night fell, motorists posted desperate messages on social media about running out of fuel, food and water.
Between 17 and 28 centimetres of snow accumulated in the area during Monday's blizzard, the National Weather Service reported, and state police had warned people to avoid driving unless absolutely necessary, especially as freezing temperatures set in.
The agency tweeted to the stranded drivers on Monday that reinforcements were arriving from other states to help them.
Tim Kaine, a US senator who lives in Richmond, said he was stuck in his car for 21 hours after starting his two-hour commute to the Capitol at 1pm on Monday.
“This has been a miserable experience,” Mr Kaine told WTOP. Traffic was so tightly packed that emergency vehicles struggled to remove disabled cars and lorries, he said.
Also stranded was NBC News correspondent Josh Lederman, who spoke on NBC’s Today show on Tuesday via video feed from his car, with a dog in the back seat. He said he had been stuck about 48 kilometres south of Washington since 8pm on Monday.
“We started to see a lot of drivers turning their cars off to conserve gas, people running out of food and water, kids and pets holed up for so many hours, people letting their pets out of the car to try to walk them on the street,” said Mr Lederman.
