Mudslide along West Virginia highway strands thousands for more than 8 hours
Thousands of motorists have been blocked for more than eight hours along a section of the rural interstate highway in southern Western Virginia after a mud flow caused by heavy rains blocked a storm drain in the previous night, flooding the tracks north.
Traffic fell on 12 miles (approximately 19 kilometers) along the Virginia-Western turnpike at around 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Charleston, the state capital. Traffic was not reachable and many motorists along the mountainous road had no choice but to stay in their vehicle during the night.
Motorists posted on social networks that they had no information on the reasons why the deadline occurred, that they had nothing to drink in their vehicles or that their children had to use the toilets.
Nicky Walters said in a telephone interview that she felt lucky when she was stuck because she was in good health, did not need medication and had no one she was not responsible to take care of.
“But I felt desperate because I knew that other people needed help,” Walters said, who became blocked by returning to Charleston of a professional wrestling event in Mount Hope. “People needed, at least, bottles of water vanish and snacks, and even less information. They needed a life buoy for the outside world, and there was none. ”
Chuck Smith, executive director of the West Virginia Parkways Authority, said that a way had reopened on Friday morning, but that traffic was stopped for hours.
“Traffic should have been diverted to allow drivers another route around the mud flow,” Smith said in a press release. “The Parkways Authority assumes full responsibility for the failure to reduce traffic and wishes to ensure the public that this will never happen again.”
No injury has been reported.
As Brittany Lemon and his family finally returned home to Parkersburg, 24 hours had passed since they started returning from their holidays in Myrtle Beach, in South Carolina.
In a video published on Facebook, Lemon said that she had no water and that her children had to use the bathroom. They were able to sleep an hour when he was stuck on the highway.
“Certainly next year, when I come back, I will be prepared for an emergency in the vehicle,” she said.
Mitch Carmichael, a former secretary of the cabinet of the Ministry of Economic Development, said on Facebook that he was on the turnpike “for hours without any relevant or timely information about the problem will be erased.”
He called him “incredibly non-professional” so that the public was left in the dark and said that he gave Virginia-Western “a terrible image”.
Governor Patrick Morrisey said in a statement that the closure “was completely unacceptable. I ordered the Authority Parkways to immediately carry out an investigation and revise his necessary procedures following this incident.”
Turnpike stops have already occurred. In 2022, a tractor trailer crashed and overthrew a chemical along the toll, closing all the ways for most of the day.
