Freezing fog leads to black ice, slide-offs and crashes

Posted January 15, 2019

UPDATE 10:30 a.m.

Freezing fog led to black ice and several crashes Tuesday morning on Wichita highways. Tom Hein with KDOT said highway crews did what they could once the roads started freezing.

“We know when these things occur, but often they occur before we come in in the morning,” Hein said. “We get out there as soon as we can, and we were doing that this morning.”

Hein said maintenance crews treated bridges and elevated roads, but the number of elevated roads and the speed with which the fog was re-freezing led to difficulties.

“Elevated roadways are always a problem in these kinds of situations, and we’ve got a lot of elevated roadways in Wichita,” Hein said. “So, we were constantly moving from one to the next to try to keep those treated, but that was practically impossible this morning.”

Hein said it’s up to drivers to stay safe when maintenance crews can’t keep up with weather conditions.

“Weather occurs, and we do our best to respond to it, but in situations like this where it’s freezing fog all over the metro, it’s hard to have those crews exactly where a driver is to give them a good roadway,” Hein said. “So, you’ve got to drive to the conditions. That’s what we saw this morning. Some didn’t, some did.”

Crashes were first reported around 5:45 a.m., right around the same time KDOT sent out its trucks to treat roads. By 8 a.m, Wichita law enforcement had urged drivers to avoid highways altogether because so many vehicles were sliding and crashing.

UPDATE 8:30 a.m.

The City of Wichita says it did not send out salt and sand trucks Monday night in response to freezing fog because the streets were already treated.

Wichita’s Public Works Director, Alan King, said the city did not send trucks to treat roads overnight because the surface streets still had enough salt and sand from last weekend’s snow and ice preparation.

“We did fairly well on the city streets,” King said. “We have been doing spot checks, elevated roads, bridges, those sorts of things, and will continue to do so until we get into warmer temperatures today.”

King said the larger problem Tuesday morning involved highways, which are under Kansas Department of Transportation jurisdiction.

“The KDOT roads were really slick this morning,” King said. “They do the snow and ice on those roads. Some of them were even closed, and that put a lot of traffic onto the arterial surface streets in the city. So, traffic volumes were unusually high this morning.”

King said city streets had a few slick spots, especially on bridges.

“Even if you treat them, with the fog and the cold temperatures, they can get slick again. So we continue to spot treat those roads. But, for the most part, the roads were pretty good.”

KFDI News is reaching out to KDOT for more information on their ice preparation and response Tuesday morning.

ORIGINAL STORY:

Law enforcement in Wichita encouraged drivers to avoid highways due to slick roads early Tuesday morning.

Freezing fog led to black ice overnight into early morning hours, and slide-offs and crashes led to significant delays on Wichita highways. Injuries were reported in many of those crashes.

Several lanes of Kellogg were closed eastbound and westbound for more than an hour Tuesday morning due to several reports of crashes between the Washington and Central Business District exits. Crashes also caused backups on northbound I-235 near Zoo Boulevard, K-96 at Meridian, and I-135 at the North Junction and at K-15.

The City of Wichita tracker showed no salt-and-sand trucks out at 6 a.m., and by 7:30 a.m. only a few trucks were out treating roads. KFDI News is reaching out to the city’s public works department to find out more.

Wichita’s tracker shows only a few salt/sand trucks are out treating roads this morning. Just an hour ago, it showed no trucks out. https://t.co/YlS8cEzp7z pic.twitter.com/GorRIvkpfo

— KFDI News (@kfdinews) January 15, 2019