The state is preparing to review the way officials handled a truck fire and traffic back-up last month on I-64 Westbound. People were trapped on Afton Mountain for six hours and they were unsure when they might finally get moving again.
Elizabeth Respess was headed home to Staunton from Charllottesville on June 29th around 4:30 when the contents of a moving van caught fire on Afton Mountain, and the state closed all westbound lanes of I-64.
“There were literally thousands of people up there, and behind me was a poor woman with three young children," she recalls. "There were people low on gas. You couldn’t run your car for long before it was going to get overheated. We happened to be one of the lucky ones. We had stopped and picked up some sparkling water.”
The National Guard came through in the emergency lane – blaring their horns – but no one stopped to check on the well-being of stranded drivers, so Respess got on the phone.
“VDOT said call the state police. The state police said it was a VDOT problem. The governor’s office was closed," Respess remembers with frustration.
At VDOT, spokesman Lou Hatter says traffic could have been directed across the median – allowed to travel eastbound, but no one was sure if it was worth the effort.
“It was not clear at the beginning how long the incident was going to last,” he explains.
Under federal guidelines, a volunteer fire department in Crozet, Virginia was in charge of emergency response. Next month, all of the agencies involved will meet to discuss how the matter was handled. In the meantime, Hatter urges drivers to listen to their radios or download VDOT’s 511-app to keep up with traffic conditions on the road ahead.
