Ascutney
— The one-two punch of drenching rain and dropping temperatures sent
Upper Valley motorists slipping across ice-slicked roads Monday, when
both interstates 89 and 91 were temporarily closed because of tractor
trailer mishaps and emergency officials reported numerous accidents and
outages.
Both tractor-trailer accidents involved the
operators attempting to avoid other vehicles. No injuries were reported
in either incident.
Traffic was halted on I-91 northbound in
Ascutney for about 90 minutes Monday morning as emergency responders
cleared an accident involving a tractor-trailer whose operator tried to
avoid striking an out-of-control SUV.
According to a Vermont State Police news
release, Karl Rex, 22, of Brick, N.J., was driving a 2006 Toyota Sequoia
around 9:45 a.m. Police said Rex had just passed a tractor-trailer
driven by Raymond Simoneau III, 43, of Claremont, when Rex lost control
of his vehicle while returning to the travel lane.
Simoneau saw the Sequoia lose control and tried
to brake and veer left in order to avoid a collision, but the SUV
continued rotating back in that direction, police said, and the two
vehicles made contact. The tractor-trailer ultimately propelled both
into the guardrails before coming to rest, blocking the Interstate.
Troopers cited Rex for driving too fast given
the weather conditions, which included rain, near-freezing temperatures
and a buildup of slush and ice, especially in the passing lane.
Just earlier, New Hampshire State Police had
closed I-89 southbound in Grantham after a tractor-trailer entered the
median when it tried to avoid hitting emergency responders to an
unrelated accident.
According to a news release from authorities,
emergency crews were working around 8:20 a.m. to retrieve several
vehicles that had skidded off the roadway. Police had closed the right
lane during the operation.
Police said that as a tow truck was pulling a
car from the bank, a tractor-trailer driven by Corey Ober, 21, of Ohio,
lost control as it approached the scene. Ober was able to avoid
colliding with workers at the scene by steering to the left, police
said, but the truck — which was loaded with about 17,000 lbs of doors —
slid off the left shoulder into the median snow bank.
Traffic was halted for about an hour as motorists were detoured off of Exit 14 to Route 10 to proceed back onto I-89 at Exit 13.
In Claremont, slick roads were blamed for a
large propane truck rolling off the road and onto its passenger side on
Jarvis Hill just after 9 a.m. The driver was not injured, according to
police, and no other vehicles were involved. The area is sparsely
populated with only a few homes, which were evacuated.
The accident happened just as the road begins a
long downhill about a mile north of Ainsworth Road.
The road was
shutdown all day as a second truck was brought in and the propane was
transferred. Vehicles were rerouted through Claremont Junction on the
Plains Road. Crews were still at the scene into the evening.
Emergency officials released a slew of
announcements and alerts throughout Monday urging motorists to use
caution, as the temperatures, which reached 40 degrees some places,
began to fall. Single-digit lows are predicted for this morning.
“The timing of these conditions couldn’t be
worse,” Vermont Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn said in a
statement Monday afternoon. “With so many cars on the road it is
critical that motorists take it easy and drive appropriately for
conditions — which are likely to change quickly.”
Temperatures were hovering at about 35 degrees
Fahrenheit in White River Junction around 6 p.m. Monday, and felt like
26 F with the wind chill, according to the National Weather Service
website.
But Mike Muccilli, a meteorologist with the
National Weather Service in Burlington, said the mercury was expected to
plunge overnight.
“That combined with some winds of 10 to 20 mph
will produce some pretty cold wind chills on the order of 5 to 10
(degrees) below zero, which is cold but not quite as bad as what we had
last week,” Muccilli said.
Winds today should dry out roadways, Muccilli
said, but he cautioned that patches of black ice will remain and that
sidewalks, which have poorer drainage than roads, are likely to remain
particularly slippery.
Although some area hardware stores reported
selling out of ice-melting salt, there was plenty still available at
Hanover True Value. Still, customers were snatching it up quickly
Monday, with about 30 bags sold to noncommercial customers in a
three-hour period in the early afternoon.
“It’s our single most popular item today,”
Campbell said, who called the icy precipitation outside her office a
“nasty weather trick.”
“This is the hat-trick of weather,” she said, referring to the season’s two previous significant storms.
Several Dartmouth College buildings were among
those that lost power in Hanover briefly Monday morning. College
spokesman Justin Anderson said there were no reports of classes being
disrupted by the outage, which mostly affected Dartmouth buildings
around the campus green.
Liberty Utilities spokesman John Shore said a
total of 143 customers were affected by the outage, which lasted about
two hours and was caused by an underground fault. Power was restored
just before noon, Shore said.
Flooding erupted on Route 12A in West Lebanon
Monday morning. City officials issued an alert about “heavy ponding
water on many roadways.
“We ask for patience and for all to use extreme caution when passing through standing water,” it said.
Lebanon officials also postponed work on a water
main break until today because of the bad weather. Benning Street
residents were receiving water Monday but the water will be turned off
today for about four to six hours, according to an alert from the city.
Several schools in the region either closed or
delayed opening. Lebanon schools started two hours late and postponed a
choral concert, which had already been postponed once before because of
bad weather last month.
At Thetford Academy, students who had expected to return after a two-week vacation were given one more day of respite.
Valley News
correspondent Patrick O’Grady contributed to this report. Maggie Cassidy
can be reached at mcassidy@vnews.com or 603-727-3220.
http://www.vnews.com/news/dartmouth/10097632-95/busy-day-for-emergency-responders
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