Northern Mississippi Transportation commissioner says blame is on him for shutdowns of I-55 and I-22

Transportation Commissioner for Northern Mississippi says that any blame for the interstate shut down in the recent freeze across the state can be placed on him, if it must. 

Hundreds of cars and trucks were stuck for more than 12 hours on Interstate 55, Interstate 22, and Highway 78 earlier this week after a winter storm brought freezing temperatures that iced the roads, making them impassable. Now, the Transportation Commissioner says that the roadway preparation went exactly as planned, but it was his allocation of resources that caused the serious backups. 

“Actually, the roadway prep went as well as we could have expected. You know, there’s a lot of accusations that we didn’t salt the roads, but that’s just wrong,” John Caldwell, the Transportation Commissioner for Northern Mississippi, said to Fox 13.

Caldwell says that several counties experienced power outages and substantial damage from the icy weather, so he sent resources to those places to help them get up and running. Caldwell says that, when he did that, other areas, such as Interstates, were left without much maintenance in serious weather conditions.  

“That little shift was probably the one that really hurt us the most, because by the time we got back here, it was all ice, and it was not as manageable as it needed to be,” he said. “There’s plenty of criticism to go around, and if anybody wants to, there’s a lot of people looking for somebody to blame, that would be me.”

“We start shorthanded, and we finish shorthanded,” he continued. “So, we did get help from the other district, you know, was it enough? No. Was it at the right place at the right time? Probably not. So we have to figure out how we missed our mark and how we need to do it better next time.”

“If you look back knowing what we know now, there are some things we certainly would have done differently,” added Brad White, the executive director of the Mississippi Department of Transportation. “But like the governor said, we learned something from every storm. The way Mississippi responds and prepares for hurricanes changed drastically after Katrina. And I’m sure that the way we prepare, respond to ice storms will change a lot after this.”