newjerseynewsroom.com

BY GARY WIEN

COMMENTARY

People get abandoned and ignored by the government all of the time. I've always known this, but on the day after Christmas I became one of the abandoned and ignored...

My wife and I, along with our dog, left to spend Christmas in Virginia on Thursday. The weather was a concern, but at the time, reports of a big snowstorm kept coming and going. Early reports that said New Jersey was going to get hit hard were followed by an increasing number of reports that believed the storm was going to be pushed farther east into the Atlantic Ocean. The news was pretty much the same on Friday, but Saturday's forecasts began to agree that the storm was coming and it would hit the coast hard. We planned to leave Sunday morning with a route that kept up west enough that we would bypass any snow until we reached the Delaware Memorial Bridge area. We knew that the Philadelphia region was expected to be hit with much of the same storm so we tried our best to get through that area before the storm picked up steam.

We made it through Virginia and Maryland without hitting any snow at all and didn't hit much in Pennsylvania until the very end, as we had hoped. The final 20 miles before the Delaware Memorial Bridge was harsh, but drive-able since the road was continuously being plowed. It was as I expected — bad driving conditions limiting your speed to 20 or 30 miles per hour, but enough to keep you moving.

We entered New Jersey and went through the New Jersey Turnpike toll booth without seeing any warnings of state notices. I'm guessing we must have entered the Turnpike sometime after 7 p.m. According to news reports, the Acting Governor of New Jersey issued a State of Emergency around 6 p.m., but the notice wasn't made public until two hours later. That's one example of how poorly the state handled this situation. Why in the world does an emergency notice take two hours to become known? A friend that checked out the New Jersey Department of Transportation website as soon as he heard of the declaration said he didn't see any mention of the State of Emergency there as well. Nice job of letting people know, huh?

The New Jersey Turnpike was packed with drivers, all driving maybe 25 miles per hour, like I figured it would be. Thinking back, I wonder just how many of the other drivers had any idea the State of Emergency was in effect. Wouldn't you have thought that the Turnpike might have put up a sign or used the existing signs to alert drivers of the Emergency ban? Considering my exit is just beyond one of the rest areas, if they had truly wanted cars off the road they could have put up signs steering us to the rest area. The rest area parking lot would have been far better than where most of the drivers would wind up spending the night.

It took a while to reach the 7B exit, but I still felt we were on pace to be home by 9 p.m. or so. The problem was that somewhere between the time of being on the New Jersey Turnpike and starting out on 195 East, the State of Emergency for New Jersey apparently kicked in. It was at that time that the plows stopped plowing, police and rescue workers were no longer seen, and anyone on the road at the time was deemed "non-essential".

I understand the idea behind issuing a state of emergency, but if there was ever a worse time to issue one I can't think of it. The Christmas weekend is one of the top two most travelled days of the year. What the State was basically saying was that they believed the roads were too dangerous for their workers to be on and the thousands already on the roads were on their own. See, that's what most people don't understand — at the time the plows stopped plowing, thousands of vehicles were still on the road. Nobody tried helping the people off the road, nobody tried forcing them off the road, and nobody tried giving them a road to work with. Everything would have been fine if they had just kept plowing. Instead, vehicle after vehicle wound up being caught in the snow.

We first stopped when we hit some sort of a traffic jam about five miles from home. Nobody really knew what the cause was and, at the time, we didn't have any idea that the roads had been abandoned by the state. Ironically, we were just behind a snowplow that we had been following for several miles. Something was blocking the plow from going any further. All we could see was a bunch of vehicles up ahead. I can't remember how long we were stuck there but I think it was about an hour and a half. During this time, my wife and I kept trying to keep the front window clean from the snow and ice, which was gathering quicker and quicker. We wanted to be ready once the vehicles starting moving again. We also had to keep shoveling snow from around the car. And then it happened. Cars quickly began moving while my wife was outside the car clearing off some ice. I think we may have been in panic mode at the time. She told me to start going. She knew our only hope was to stay close to that snowplow and its blinking lights. I could barely see much of anything but I started moving the car and following the flashing lights. I tried driving slow, hoping she would be able to hop in but she was left behind. I think she was helping the car behind me shovel some snow by its wheel. She apparently gave them the shovel and tried catching up to me.

I managed to drive another mile or two before I lost sight of the plow. It had apparently turned off at the exit for the Parkway South (not the direction I wanted) and got stuck in the snow. While driving I was yelling my wife's name, trying desperately to hear from her. I wished to God I hadn't gone anywhere until she got into the car. At this time, I was stressed out of my mind and not thinking clearly. I honestly thought I'd never see her again. I hit a huge pile of snow and the car stopped. As I got out of the car, the snow just up ahead on the road must have been around two feet. None of the area looked as if it had been plowed in quite some time. The entire road was covered without even the slightest hint that a plow had left a mark anywhere. It appeared as if the plows had gone just up to a mile prior and then left via the exit ramp.

Thankfully, my wife showed up — panting and nauseous from running the past mile in the driving snow. I was so upset at leaving her, but she was apparently much more rational than I was. She kept saying she knew she would catch up with me sometime. Little did we know that where we were was going to be our home for the night. We grabbed a blanket from the trunk and tried warming up.

We had made it as far as three miles from home and were stuck just ahead of the sign for Belmar. A crowd of vehicles were behind me hoping I could keep going because my car was blocking them. Some guys tried helping me, but I knew it wasn't going to work. I kept telling them to look at the road up ahead. I'm driving a Volkswagen Jetta and the snow was two feet high — far too high for me to drive across. It took several minutes but I finally convinced them that their only chance was to drive around my car. Since somebody far behind us had our shovel, I began clearing a path for the others by kicking snow and moving ice blocks with my hands. One or two people helped, but most didn't. They apparently didn't want to be the one to drive first even though their vehicles were SUVs and trucks and mine was just a small car. All I knew is that there was no way I was going to be able to go even three feet before being stranded again and it didn't make much sense to try, but if I could get a few trucks to go ahead of me they might burn off enough snow to give me a chance.

My feet were freezing. I was only wearing dress shoes at the time and it was around 25 degrees. I can only guess at what the wind chill was — probably something in the low single digits. My hands were freezing as my gloves were soaked. I just kept kicking and throwing piles and piles of snow until there was a decent sized path for them. Finally, someone tried the path. It was difficult, but a van behind me managed to drive on through. It was followed by a truck and then another truck. Despite their confidence that they could make it, every one of the vehicles behind me wound up getting stuck just a couple hundred feet from where I was.