by Kerry Dougherty
Let’s face it. Lots of us are cranky as we start the New Year.
Thousands — shoot, probably hundreds of thousands — of air travelers were stranded around the country this week after flights were cancelled because of weather or staffing shortages.
Including me.
As our taxi approached the New Orleans airport Monday morning my phone beeped. There it was: A text saying my flight to Norfolk was cancelled. Snow and ice at BWI.
Saw that one coming. I’d been watching the Baltimore weather the night before with growing alarm.
Worse, Southwest Airlines couldn’t fly me and my friends out of the Big Easy until Wednesday and no other airline had seats available.
Ordinarily, a few extra days in New Orleans would be a lagniappe. But we have jobs and people counting on us.
So the three of us rented a car and headed back to Tidewater. A journey of more than 1,000 miles and 16 hours on the road.
As it turned out, our unexpected road trip and exhaustion were nothing compared to the Gothic situation unfolding at the same time in Northern Virginia on I-95. As we drove through Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia on Monday, we followed harrowing news reports of people stranded in their cars on the icy interstate. For hours and hours.
In fact, the nephew of my pals spent 12 hours on I-95. Strangers were sending out frantic Tweets about how they’d been without insulin for hours and were feeling weak. Others said they hadn’t seen an emergency vehicle in five hours. They were cold, hungry, almost out of gas and dealing with shivering children who needed bathrooms.
Then there was U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine who spent the entire night on the frozen interstate. It took him 27 hours from the time he left his Richmond home until after he arrived at the Capitol. Like others stuck in the wintry catastrophe, he ran his engine for 30 minutes at a time, trying to keep warm.
Update: I've been on the road for 27 hours. https://t.co/waGSrARUEe
— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) January 4, 2022
News reports say that what started with a jack-knifed tractor trailer caused multiple accidents and traffic to be backed up for about 50 miles in both directions, as temperatures dipped into the teens and those trapped on the highway ran out of food, water and fuel.
Knee-jerk Twitter warriors knew who was to blame.
Tweets such as these were quickly deleted once they learned that Ralph Northam is governor until January 15.
This was Northam’s final failure. It wasn’t until 8:18 Tuesday morning that Governor-For-10-More-Days surfaced with a Tweet insisting his “team” had been working through the night.
My team has been working throughout the night alongside @VSPPIO, @VaDOT, and @VDEM to respond to the situation on I-95.
State and local emergency personnel are continuing to clear downed trees, assist disabled vehicles, and re-route drivers.
— Governor Ralph Northam (@VAGovernor73) January 4, 2022
From all accounts, there was little evidence of that. In fact, the highway wasn’t cleared until 8:30 Tuesday evening.
Is a massive traffic pile-up during a snowstorm the fault of the governor?
Yep, indirectly.
Those “teams” that failed miserably Monday night were led by Northam’s people. And an alert governor, one who wasn’t pawing through time capsules or packing clothes or whatever it is Northam’s doing in his final days in the executive mansion, might have taken control, demanded that teams of workers get a lane open in each direction and sent rescue workers or the National Guard in to go car to car searching for folks in distress.
By all accounts that didn’t happen.
And by the grace of God it appears no one died due to Virginia’s incomprehensible failure to plan for a January snowstorm on a chronically congested stretch of interstate south of Washington.
The Northam administration’s inability to deal competently with crises has been a hallmark of the past four years. Remember the governor’s prevarications about that blackface photo? His nutty Covid restrictions? His haste to close schools? His initial refusal to tell Virginians which nursing homes were experiencing Covid outbreaks, using medical privacy as an excuse for his evasiveness? His slow rollout of tests in 2020? His even slower rollout of vaccines in 2021?
Now this.
We have to hope the Youngkin administration will have a plan in place to respond nimbly and effectively to public safety emergencies.
Leaving motorists stranded on an interstate for more than a day in deadly winter weather is appalling, dangerous and unacceptable.
This column has been republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed & Unedited.
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