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By BEN TIMBERLAKE
Press Enterprise Writer
LIME RIDGE — Eastbound Interstate 80 became a parking lot for as much as 20 miles between here and Tank in Black Creek Township for much of the last two days, officials say.
PennDOT officials shut down 24 miles of the eastbound lanes last night and aim to get it cleared and plowed today.
The closure stretches from the interchange with Route 11 here to the Interstate 81 interchange.
First, workers have to clear out the backed-up vehicles, get others unstuck from snow and tow the rest, officials say.
Then, plows will clear and salt the road.
That work started Thursday at about 5 p.m. and will probably continue through this morning, said PennDOT spokeswoman Karen Dussinger.
She couldn't say how long the work would last or when the interstate would reopen.
But extracting some vehicles was likely to take hours, she said.
Interstate 81 was also closed for 66 miles in both directions from the Interstate 80 interchange to the Fort Indiantown Gap interchange.
The suggested Interstate 80 detour is north on Route 11 to the Nanticoke area, then onto Route 29 south to Interstate 81 south.
Westbound lanes are open.
Start and stop
On Thursday, traffic was moving sporadically along Interstate 80, but as soon as some messes would clear, other vehicles would snarl the flow, said Rick Mason of the PennDOT office that covers Columbia County.
The interstate's east lanes were shut down from Lime Ridge to the Tank area at about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, then reopened Thursday morning.
Vehicles were moving in one lane Thursday afternoon, but then tractor-trailers had trouble on hills, officials said, and traffic again came to a standstill.
The most recent trouble near here started at about 3 p.m. Thursday when tractor-trailers got stranded on the hill heading east out of Tank.
Emergency responders couldn't get through the traffic, so tow trucks and plows had to get on the road at the Route 93 interchange and head back the wrong way to get to the disabled tractor-trailers, explained Sgt. Scott Price, commander of the Bloomsburg State Police barracks.
And later on, a tractor-trailer driver jackknifed the rig when he illegally tried to use an emergency vehicle crossover just over the border in Luzerne County, Price said.
10 hours, 20 miles
At one point, traffic in the eastbound lanes was backed up to the Buckhorn interchange, Price said.
Backlogs are dangerous because drivers don't expect vehicles to be stopped on the interstate, Price said.
Once stopped vehicles build up, police try to get a cruiser on the side of the road with its lights on to warn people of the slowdown.
As the backlogs mounted, troopers had to back up their cruisers to provide enough warning, he said.
On Wednesday night, some motorists spent as long as 10 hours stuck on the highway, stopping and restarting their vehicles to keep warm, said Mifflinville Rangers Chief Don Diltz.
He worked with a crew of local snowmobilers checking on stranded motorists.
Town traffic
The slowdowns and closures sent extra traffic onto smaller highways and through towns.
Early Thursday, Bloomsburg's Main Street was bumper-to-bumper, with what looked like the heaviest traffic heading east through town, said Police Chief Leo Sokoloski.
The extra vehicles did not cause any additional traffic problems, he said.
And the only traffic signal that changed was the light at the West and Main streets intersection.
That signal turns to a flashing yellow along Main Street after a storm because the hill there would make it difficult for heavier vehicles to stop, Sokoloski explained.
As many as 20,000 vehicles travel each direction on Interstate 80 through Columbia County on an average day, Price said. About one in three of those vehicles is a tractor-trailer, he said.
Other trouble
There were lines of traffic heading toward downtown Berwick in Briar Creek and Berwick Thursday afternoon and evening. Westbound lanes were moving.
At 7:30 p.m., vehicles were moving slowly as far west as the Red Maple Inn.
South Centre Township Police, who cover Mifflin Township, stationed an officer at the interchange and Love's truck stop to direct the slew of vehicles leaving the interstate there, Price said.
Some tractor-trailer drivers tried to navigate the twisting Route 339, Price said. But a few had trouble and became disabled, halting traffic on that road, too, he said.
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