The state of Virginia, and the Northam administration specifically, was caught completely with its pants down unprepared for a storm that, while fast-moving, was not unforeseen by weather forecasters. Furthermore, even if the storm overwhelmed the Virginia Department of Transportation on Monday, how did that translate into drivers still stranded along a 40-mile portion of Interstate 95 some 24 hours later?
Nonetheless, Northam says it’s your fault, you fools, for not listening to the warnings he didn’t give you:
“We gave warnings, and people need to pay attention to these warnings, and the less people that are on the highways when these storms hit, the better,” he said. “I feel for these people that are stranded but just want to let them know we’re doing everything we can to get to them in a very challenging situation.”
There were very few warnings from the state, and certainly no warnings or attempts to close I-95 on Monday before conditions got out of hand. In many circumstances, states will close portions of a road to keep drivers off it if they’re simply aren’t able to maintain safe driving conditions.
Ironically, the state was warning drivers about something, it just wasn’t snowy road conditions:
Democrat COVID hysteria, another contribution to the "Northam's Revenge" I-95 debacle.
Signs said "Mask up" not "Dangerous road conditions" and that may have gotten people killed. Seems impossible that no one died – probably be finding bodies in towed cars or on the roadside. https://t.co/CFQb9b5ffn
— The Virginia Project (@ProjectVirginia) January 5, 2022
Drivers caught in the mess do not share Northam’s view that they missed the warnings:
But some motorists said they aren’t to blame for what they saw as government officials’ poor planning.
Ronni Schorr said Virginia officials were “not at all” prepared, and she didn’t see plows until Tuesday morning. She said her vehicle finally exited the highway after 14 hours, weaving around others stuck in the median, after a plow cleared an exit ramp on the other side of the highway. A tractor-trailer blocked the nearest exit ramp, she said.
“I’m not angry at the snow,” Schorr said. “I’m just upset at the way they handled it.”
There is story after story of stranded drivers just out of reach of an exit ramp, only to never see any attempt to clear it by VDOT plows or crews. The Virginia National Guard, which Northam contended was “on standby,” was never deployed. It would seem prudent after 10 hours or so to perhaps think about deploying every possible resource to reach and rescue trapped motorists, wouldn’t it?
Despite the ability to at least somewhat communicate with trapped motorists over cellular notifications, the communication was lacking, and late:
Most frustrating, she said, was the lack of communication from state and local officials as she and her husband took turns catnapping overnight in their Mazda. Finally, on Tuesday morning, they received a push alert on their phones from Virginia.
“In a world today when everybody’s got their cellphones with them, there was no information, there was nothing,” Schorr said. “If they were able to send an alert out this morning, why couldn’t they do that yesterday?”
If the state government is unable to help, it may have been important to let people know that they could be waiting for a long, long time.
Virginia is a state south of the Mason-Dixon line, we don’t see a huge amount of snow every year. That doesn’t mean the state is incapable of managing a storm or maintaining order on the roadways. In prior years, the state government would be put into a state of emergency before anything hit the ground which freed up resources and put VDOT, and other agencies, into a state of readiness.
The disgraced outgoing Ralph Northam didn’t do any of that. Instead, his end result now is to blame Virginia drivers for his failures. At this point, though, he and his party have already been thrown out of the state with Republican Glenn Youngkin set to take the oath in Virginia on January 15.
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