Winter storm in the United States: Motorists stranded for dozens of hours

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 a winter storm that covered the area with snow and knocked down several trees.

The 86-kilometer section of the I-95 freeway leading to the US capital, Washington, was closed Tuesday as authorities tried to clear the road with tree trunks, unstable trucks, piles of snow and more snow patches.

“We know a lot of passengers have been stranded on the I – 95 freeway for a long time in the last 24 hours,” a Virginia Department of Transportation spokeswoman said in a statement Tuesday. .

“We were stuck there for 12 hours,” one American, Jeff, told Instagram on Tuesday morning. The winter sun, which replaced Monday’s storm, failed to deliver the trucks and cars trapped around it.

During the freezing night from Monday to Tuesday, the net surfer was told to “be restrained in the belly of the I-95 beast” between the two trucks after traveling 40km in 12 hours. “That’s right, we have some food and water,” he told his subscribers.

Democratic Senator Tim Cain from Virginia, Hillary Clinton’s former running mate in 2016, is also one of the drivers stuck on this axis, considered the worst in normal times in the country.

“I started my trip (to Washington), which usually takes about two hours, at 1:00 pm yesterday. Nineteen hours later, I’m still out of the Capitol, ”sits American elected officials, who tweeted Tuesday morning with a photo of his car stuck behind three trucks.

“Everyone be careful,” said the former governor of Virginia.

“We slept in our car while it was freezing” -5 ° C, Kyle Holland, a father, told Instagram on Tuesday that he was stuck “almost 24 hours” on the highway with his wife and her two children.

A resident near the exit after a 5km walk finally greeted the family at midnight, but “we don’t know when we can leave,” he added.

Florida-based CBS reporter Jim Diffede explained on Twitter that he had been alone for more than 20 hours and had not seen freeway workers or tow trucks for 12 hours.

“All Virginia residents must continue to avoid I-95,” Ralph North, Governor of Virginia, assured us that his teams had worked “overnight” and were continuing their efforts to clear the highway and provide warm shelters for the missing. త్రోవ.

The hurricane, which hit the region on Monday, deposited nearly twenty centimeters of snow, paralyzed the capital Washington and especially blocked President Joe Biden on his Air Force One flight for half an hour.

Nearly 255,000 homes in Virginia were left without electricity on Tuesday, as well as tens of thousands of homes in the neighboring state of Maryland, according to a special site Power Outage.