Virginia Senator Tim Kaine (D) was stuck on I-95 for more than 27 hours as he and hundreds of other commuters sat idly while emergency crews work to remove congestion and severe traffic caused by a winter storm that dumped as much as 14 inches of snow on the Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. region.
Earlier on Tuesday, The Daily Wire reported that Kaine had tweeted a picture, saying that he had been stuck for 19 hours because of the snowfall. At 3: 26 pm ET, Kaine updated his followers that he was still stranded on the highway 27 hours later:
Update: I’ve been on the road for 27 hours. https://t.co/waGSrARUEe
— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) January 4, 2022
Kaine had also tweeted that he had some food, albeit what appears to be a clementine.
“A CT family returning in a packed car from Florida walked by in the middle of the night handing out oranges as we were stopped for hours on I-95. Bless them!” the senator said.
A CT family returning in a packed car from Florida walked by in the middle of the night handing out oranges as we were stopped for hours on I-95. Bless them! pic.twitter.com/MrmZ1ZF6JJ
— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) January 4, 2022
At 4:20 pm ET, Kaine tweeted that he had finally made it to the Capitol.
Ok after 27 hours on the road from Richmond to DC, very happy to be back in the Capitol and working on voting rights legislation this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/6XE45ZQUvq
— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) January 4, 2022
According to the Associated Press, desperate travelers contemplated asking other drivers on the road for food and water if necessary:
Susan Phelan when she got stuck in the northbound lanes of I-95 and did not move for roughly 10 hours.
After a frigid night without sleep, food or water, she pulled into the driveway at her Alexandria, Virginia, home just before noon Tuesday.
“Mom was right: Always pack a Snickers bar,” said Phelan, a former federal communications officer. “At some point in the gridlock, I was going to have to start knocking on windows asking for water. At that point, everybody was helping everybody. If you needed something, it was not a problem.”
Another woman said she was crying tears of joy once she spotted a snowplow after 16 hours of being stuck on the highway:
Meera Rao and her husband, Raghavendra, were driving home from visiting their daughter in North Carolina when they got stuck Monday evening. They were only 100 feet past an exit but could not move for roughly 16 hours.
“Not one police (officer) came in the 16 hours we were stuck,” she said. “No one came. It was just shocking. Being in the most advanced country in the world, no one knew how to even clear one lane for all of us to get out of that mess?”
[…]
Rao said they stopped their car engine at least 30 times to conserve gas and ran the heat just enough to get warm. They had some potato chips, nuts and apples to eat, but Rao did not want to drink any bottled water because she had a sprained ankle and did not think she could reach a makeshift restroom.
Finally, around midmorning Tuesday, a tow truck driver appeared and cleared away snow, allowing the Raos and other cars back up and take the exit.
“He was a messenger from God,” Rao said. “I literally was in tears.”
At 3:55 pm ET or so, Kaine apparently had made it off the highway and was able to head into his Capitol Hill office:
And after getting stuck in a DC area snowstorm on I-95 that turned a 2 hour commute from Richmond, VA into a 27 hour slog, @timkaine has arrived at his DC office: pic.twitter.com/c4ORrJP40k
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) January 4, 2022