Motorists were stranded overnight Wednesday on Interstate 40 in Arkansas as vehicle wrecks on icy roads stalled traffic for up to 10 hours, authorities said. Patches of ice that formed on the White River Bridge in Monroe County resulted in a tractor-trailer crash that blocked the road in both directions, Arkansas Department of Transportation spokesman Danny Straessle said.
Arkansas State Police cleared the wreck, and salt trucks treated the road, but it wasn't long before other collisions stopped traffic again, Straessle said.
"That's how it went all night," he said. Straessle and Arkansas State Police spokesman Bill Sadler said they did not know the exact number of crashes caused by winter weather conditions, but they said there were "several."
With wetlands occupying the surrounding terrain between the bridge and the nearest exit, there was nowhere for traffic to go, Straessle said. Some motorists reported waiting up to 10 hours for the series of wrecks to be cleared. "We've always had challenges when there's been an accident out there," Straessle said. "We continued to put information out there about salt truck activities and how much longer it would be, but that's all we could do."
The Arkansas Department of Transportation encourages travelers to be prepared for winter weather by keeping food, bottled water and a blanket in their vehicle when they commute on the interstate over long distances.
Traffic began to clear Thursday morning as temperatures rose above freezing, but some sections were still blocked by truck drivers who had parked in the road and fallen asleep. Troopers were knocking on doors and blaring their sirens Thursday morning to wake drivers and get traffic moving, Sadler said.
Traffic remained heavy from Forrest City to Wheatley on Thursday morning. Many of the congested areas were still being cleared when travelers from Memphis got caught in the queue that had developed overnight, Straessle said.
"There is a lot of truck traffic in and out of Memphis, and it's just a way of life for the interstate there in eastern Arkansas," he said. "Herding trucks is not an easy task."
No other roads were blocked as severely as I-40, Straessle said, but state police did report working crashes on the Cache River Bridge in Lawrence County.
"Troopers worked a number of slide-offs and jackknifes on the bridge where ice continued to form as soon as the highway department could clear it," Sadler said.
NW News on 11/16/2018