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Friday the 29th of March 2024 12:30:50 AM

December 4, 2010

Stumble It!I Am one Of “Those People”

Filed under: Current Events — Eric Ptak @ 4:59 pm


This is what I saw for 10 hours
This is pretty much what I saw for 10 hours on the night of December 1-2, 2010. On the right is the car in front of me with the lights off, and the car in front of them with lights on. To the left is the tractor trailer I sat next to. In the upper right, in the distance can be seen ITT Heat Transfer. It is a dark picture, but then again, it was a long dark night.

The other day, I was visiting a couple of friends in Amherst, off of Maple Road, for dinner, drinks, and conversation. At 9:00, I decided to go home, because I had to work in the morning. The weather was clear, and there was a light dusting of snow on the ground. I got on the Youngmann Expressway, to see that the roads were clear, no snow was falling, and traffic flow was steady. From there I got on the Mainline Thruway. There were a few flakes in the air, but nothing of consequence. I’m in the far left lane, because I drive all the way to the Niagara Thruway, and it doesn’t make sense to be in the other lanes.

I see the yellow lettered sign above traffic, stating “EXITS 52-57 CLOSED”. Unfortunately, this sign is after Exit 51, so that knowledge is useless. Then I see traffic backing up. I pass by a couple of snowplows driving in tandem and spreading salt. Then traffic becomes stop and go.

I turn the radio to 1610, the Thruway station. All they were saying was “Westbound Thruway is closed, exits 52 through 57. Lake effect snow.” Again, it was pretty useless information; what I wanted to know was what caused it, and how long I was going to be in traffic. Eventually, a trucker lets me into the center lane. Since I was already past the Walden Avenue exit, my plan was to try to get to William Streeet, and go home from there. At about 10:30, I finally got into the right hand lane. I was right before the railroad overpass near ITT Heat Transfer. By this time, frustration was kicking in. I had a full bladder, I was not going very fast, and there was nothing on any station on the radio that was useful: just your everyday network affiliated shows.

By the time I got to the top of the overpass at about 11:15, traffic had ground to a halt. There was still no information on the radio, on any station. For the next couple of hours, I busied myself by getting out of my car to brush it off, since there was still hope that it would clear up and I could get home to get a few hours of sleep before going in to work. I talked with the people in front and in back of me, and the trucker on the sedi of me. Nobody had any information about what was going on, what caused it, and when we were going to get out. At about 11:30, I heard on Thruway Information Radio that the blockage was scheduled to be cleared, but it would be 2 hours before traffic would start flowing again. This was welcome news, until I realized that they were talking about the eastbound traffic, not westbound. Westbound was stop and go, according to the radio. For us it was “stop”, and we were wondering where the “go” was.

Finally at about 1:00, we started shutting our cars off. We were resigned to being there for a while. The guy behind me told me his gas light was on, and his windshield wiper had broken. I still had a half of a tank, but not knowing how long this was going to be, I wanted to conserve it. I got my Walkman out of my gym bag, and turned on some music – Everything but the Girl, Supreme Beings of Leisure, Goldfrapp, Morcheeba, and various trip-hop and chillout bands and songs was what I had to listen to. Nice, calming women’s voices, which was what I needed at that moment. I got out my Kenken book and did some puzzles by flashlight.I turned my car on every half hour or so for about 5 minutes to get more heat, and to see if there was any information.

There was plenty of information on the radio; it was just not useful to me. WGR had what happened in sports last evening. On WBEN was “Coast to Coast AM”, with George Noori talking with someone about a news conference that NASA was holding the next day, which supposedly would indicate the increased possibility of extraterrestrial life, if not confirming it. On WNED was the BBC World Report, with speculation on the FIFA World Cup site selections to be made the following morning. KB 1520 had the Phil Hendrie show, with people calling in and talking to this guy about how sitting at a 12-year-old girl’s feet leads to perversion, or something like that. And on Thruway Misinformation Radio, the same tape loop over and over and over and over and over again.

Occasionally, a large SUV or truck would go by on the shoulder. I considered doing that, but after going out there to relieve myself, I realized that all I would do is get stuck, since the snow was higher than my undercarriage. At about quarter to two, my suspicions were confirmed when I saw a white care being pushed down the shoulder by a truck with a plow. In spite of being pushed, the car kept fishtailing and getting stuck. There was no way in hell I was going to try that. Not so humorously, about 20 minutes later, one of the guys a few cars up tried to make a break for it and pulled onto the shoulder. He got stuck, and it took 4 guys to push his car back where it was.

I also saw state troopers driving up and down the shoulder, knocking on windows to see if people were OK, and giving out water. They were also in the dark, as far as what was happening, and how long it would be before we would get out of there. Somehow, we had gotten the knowledge that it was a tractor trailer that jack knifed at the entrach to the Niagara Thruway that caused this mess. People were also walking up and down the shoulder with gas cans, presumably for those unlucky souls who ran out of fuel.

It was at 3:00 AM that I decided it was time to call in to work. There was no way I was going to make it in, even if I made it home soon. I called and left messages on my boss’ voice mail, his boss’ voice mail, and the voice mail of the woman who is my backup at work. I went into my trunk, and got out the stadium blanket I had there, and tried curling up to nap. That was not easy, since I was sitting in my bucket seat with a steering wheel in front of me, and I was keeping my eyes slightly open to see if there was any movement on the road. It would have been nice to have had a warm body to curl up next to, but they frown on keeping warm bodies in your trunk for some reason.

At random times throughout the night, thunder rumbled and lightning split the sky. That was weird, because you don’t really associate thunder and lightning with snow storms. However, it was close to the freezing point, so from a meteorological standpoint, it was not unrealistic. One of the lightning strikes appeared to hit close to ITT Heat Transfer. Since I was on top of an overpass, that did not make me feel comfortable.

Finally, at 5 AM, the morning news came on WBEN. All of a sudden, they were animated about the situation on the Thruway. They immediately launched into the Thruway Authority and its abject failure in this “crisis”, and finally said that there was going to be an attempt to start clearing out the Westbound Thruway at about 7:30. I immediately thought to myself, “Here I have been for 8 hours, waiting for some news on the radio that was worthwhile, and your station did not even give out a phone number for stranded people to call. And you want to rail into the Thruway for their failures? What about your responsibility to inform the public?” What a joke that station is. How different would things have turned out if they sent out reporters to the scene at say, 11 o’clock the night before to report live on the situation, give out information, organizing Good Samaritans to help people out and the like? Sure, I like listening to Coast to Coast AM, but the way WBEN carried on, and funneled anger towards a governmental institution made me taste vomit in the back of my throat.

At 5:15, the alarm went off on my cell phone. I was awake now for 24 hours, minus the few minutes I was able to get some sleep through the night. I went out to relieve myself again, and got some water out of my gym bag. I kicked off my shoes, and tried curling up again. I had about a third of a tank of gas left, so I turned off the car and waited it out. At about 6:30, I turned the car on again, and switched to 97 Rock. They were talking with a woman who was coming through the area with her husband, on their way to Cape Cod to celebrate their anniversary. She needed to go potty, as she said, and she was advised that yellow snow was part of the landscape in Buffalo, and if she had to do a number 2, just call it road kill. They did tell her to come back in the summer when the weather was much nicer.

I called work again at 7:30. I tried calling different managers that I had programmed into my cell phone, but all I got was voice mail. At about quarter to eight, I got in touch with of one of the floor people, and asked her to get a manager. My boss’ boss had just come in, and we talked for a bit. She said she was driving in on the eastbound Thruway, and said to herself, “Boy am I glad I am not stuck in that”. She found it incredible that I was part of it, and we agreed that I would take the day off. It turns out that they had opened up the William Street Exit, and started digging people out. While I was talking with her, the cars in front of me started moving, and I had to cut her short because I had to get off of the phone so I could drive.

It was 8:30 after I got home, almost a full 12 hours after I initially got on the road. Other people would be stranded for much longer, and their stories pepper the news around Buffalo. I found out after the fact that on the 11:00 news, the 3 local TV stations were giving out emergency numbers for people to call if they were stranded. That was nice, but I don’t have a TV in my car. It was yet again another local media failure.

It was not difficult for me. I didn’t have kids in the car, nor did I need medical assistance or food. It was just frustrating as hell, not knowing what was going on, and being unable to do anything about it. I’m thankful I keep a full tank of gas in the winter time, and that I have the foresight to keep things in my trunk that are useful in the time of crisis. And I count myself lucky that it wasn’t worse for me as it was for other people.

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