COLUMBUS — From Tuesday night into Wednesday, Interstate 90 was shut down for nearly 12 hours between Columbus and Big Timber, causing a back up that stretched for miles.
The truck drivers who managed to get off the interstate at exit 408 in Columbus waited it out at the Exxon gas station.
“Waiting for the storm to pass. On the 90 over here, there's a lot of bad ice and weather,” said driver Gary Goins on Wednesday.
Goins and his wife were on their way home to Reno, Nevada, with their truckload but came to a halt when they hit Columbus.
“We sat overnight, me and my wife. We got here pretty early, so we got a good parking spot,” Goins said. “It was pretty bad going over the pass. There was a lot of trucks flipped over and stuff like that.”
Derek Baynes of North Carolina is heading to Seattle, but he had also been stuck for hours.
“I got stuck first in St. Louis, and then we traveled on up here and we've hit it again. Been here since about 3 o'clock in the morning,” Baynes said. “This has been the worst ice storm I've ever hit.”
Stillwater County Emergency Services Chief David Stamey said the agency was informed at 11:30 Tuesday night by the Montana Department of Transportation that the road would be shut down.
“This was due to poor weather conditions that existed in Sweetgrass County,” Stamey said. “They had high winds, large snowdrifts, and low visibility. So, for the safety of all the travelers on the road, they closed the roads.”
Stamey spent multiple hours Wednesday morning setting up closure signs and diverting traffic.
“This morning, we started to actually clear up passenger traffic and left the semi-trucks on the highway. But we started to sort of decompress some of the traffic and get it off the roadways,” Stamey said. “I don't have confirmation, but I think that there were several accidents, which is what started the thought process to do the road closures.”
Longtime truck driver Pat Carlson of Idaho chose to take a different route after waiting for about three hours at the gas station.
“Mother Nature is usually pretty good to me. I picked this road up in Michigan and everything was going all hunky-dory until I hit this,” Carlson said. “I'll backtrack back to Billings and then I'll catch (Highway) three up to (Highway) 12, 12 to 191, 191 back into Big Timber.”
Carlson said that will backtrack him about 200 miles, but he said that was better than sitting there.
“This time of year, I mean, all it takes is for one person to be over-driving road conditions, flipping their rig, and roads closed,” Carlson said.
Traffic resumed in both directions right before 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday.
“This is just truck driving the world. You've got to take the good with the bad,” Baynes said.
But as drivers began their travels again, many remain cautious.
“All my truck drivers just be safe. This is a bad time of the year, but especially on the 90s, just take it easy. Don't drive too fast and always be safe on the road,” Goins said.
