Transcripts For WNCN Today 20160122

Cars involved in that. Both sides of 95, northbound and southbound shutdown. People who have to be out in that area, what should they be thinking about and doing . Right now i believe there are lane closed and the road we closed in different places. Are very, very carefully. Stay away from other to other vehicles. If the other vehicle gets around it may take you with it. If you stay far enough back and they happened to be unfortunate enough to crash you can stay out of it. Would you say that people, for the most part, have heated the governors warning from yesterday about staying home heated the governors warning all schools were canceled so you stay home. Some businesses are open and those people have traveled carefully, we hope and be cautious because its slick. We are out salting and the secondary roads because her key focus is on the primary roads. Other the roads will be very slick. This is a storm that is constantly coming at us and it looks like it will be doing so for the greater part of the next day or so. What challenges does that present in terms of salting the roads as you were talking about because you might get brine or salt to put down on the roads and clear up the one spot and in hour later it comes back. We just keep going out and looking at the interstate and bridges and overpasses and so forth period we stay on the roads and we will keep going as long as the storm goes. Gets along for the workers. They get to take breaks and go back to their offices and their maintenance yards and go back saturday sometime. I was going to say how long does dot plan to be up there . It looks as though the weather will be through saturday afternoon. Would you need to be out past we will get help if it warms up at all because it will melt some things. Once it dies down and we get the main roads cleared we can get side roads and get help from Mother Nature because it will warm up each day. Usually the case around here is if there is an extended snow event the weather helps us get rid of it before we can get to it. This might be Highway Patrol question, in terms of abandoned vehicles, what are you think so far . They have found some abandoned vehicles and as the policy has been we will check to make sure no one is and it and if someone loses control they can sometimes slide on the shoulder but if there is a vehicle there they will hit it. If someone stops and gets out would tell them to be careful. You could be stepping out in a traveling and under conditions like today somebody might try to swerve and miss you and not be able to. Bottom line as we continue through the day and through the greater part of the morning thinking you head out now, all the people that were going to work have gotten to work. What should people be thinking about no . Its supposed to turn into rain and that and then get the best thing to do is stay home until you hear the all clear sign from the governor or the dot or the media that the it may mean you are in the house the rest of the day. The best thing to do is stay off the roads. Thank you very much, steve abbott, department of transportation. In less than a half an hour the governor will be here to do a briefing for the entire state. On air and online. Live in raleigh, beau minnick. Weve been telling you about three semi trucks involved near this is in johnston county. Justin quesinberry made it there and we have a live report coming up later. Its a little chaotic on the scene we will continue to update you. Unfortunate accident and justin county. 71 racks. Started at 5 00 a. M. And its grown. Lets switch gears and to check in with the weather center. Have you stopped talking . I know your mouth is tired. I think everyone is sick of hearing this talk. On outside. Unfortunately, it is leading to very dangerous travel conditions. Accidents. If you are watching from home and you dont have to go outside stay inside where its warm. Its 27 degrees right now and this is a live picture from our this is the view we look down snow falling and sleet mixing reducing visibility and making the roadways slick. Here is a loop over the past two hours and weve been dealing with snow. Weve been dealing with sleet and freezing rain. Blister on and off around santos and to be honest with well. Lets stop this and zoom in to where the steadiest precipitation is falling. Its falling as snow along the area. The coldest air will stay over the virginia border. Roxborough youve been seeing that he rain. Now and roxborough they are at 2. 2 inches of snow and sleet, right around the northern portions of granville towards henderson and seeing steady snow. When you went to durham and youre still seeing snow south of 85. Hills bore in chapel hill light flurries hillsboro in chapel from Downtown North raleigh is greatly visibility is greatly reduced. Snow and sleet and if you are safely within the confines of your home, snap a picture. I want to see what you are seeing. Email it to us. We are on it all, facebook and twitter. Around sandhills this is where it gets dicey. Fayetteville thats where we are seeing the freezing rain. If you think its rain its not. Temperatures below freezing. This is going to accumulate on services are on the, on anything thats elevated. Street signs light poles the weight increases on those we will continue to see those fall throughout the course of the afternoon. Here we are towards more county with sleet and snow winter storm warning in raleigh. Continues through 6 00 p. M. For all of the area shaded in blue and it includes sandhills in areas along the virginia border. Then we head into the winter advisory record and it continues through the same time tonight to tomorrow at 6 00 we will continue to monitor the conditions but i want to walk you through our hour of what were going to see. To do that i will turn it over to kristin with a future forecast. Alyssa, weve been dealing with the messy wintry mix of they today. It will only continue as we have to the rest of our day and into our nighttime hours saturday as well. Lets step you through an hour by hour look. The best chance for heavier snow showers is north of the triangle along virginia border counties we we have been seeing bigger snowflakes. By lunchtime the best chance for heavy snow is going to be north of the triangle. Around the triangle point to the south we have a messy mix of sleet and freezing rain late this afternoon into the evening have a surge of warmer air that will push and changing the precipitation through plain rain and it will be cold with temperatures hovering in some spots just above freezing pick the best chance for that will be an area south and east of the triangle along the i95 counties. Them later tonight the rain pulls out of the area. Colder area colder air gets whipped back around. A very complex set up in a complex storm system that providing us with a lot of frozen pretrip precipitation. Weve had freezing rain. It starts as snow and hits a very deep layer of warm air above the surface but the surface is still freezing but the raindrop will freeze out to anything it comes into contact weve seen a lot of that today. For look at how much you can expect we will send things back over to alyssa corfont. Thank you. These numbers are going to be smaller. They will gravitate towards the smaller end of the range. 13 inches of snow to lee and southern portions of lake county. It extends north and east through portions of franklin county. Franklin county and nash county up towards Halifax County. We have 3 inches to 5 inches of rain around the room and northern portions of orange and wake county. A big radiant in a small amount of space. Here is what i am thinking as far as ice. Half an inch in those areas shaded in purple. Mainly west of raleigh this morning and into the afternoon. A quarter of an inch possible through portions of wade, hope counties as well. The wins will be another element. They will strengthen throughout the afternoon so you have the weight of the snow and the ice and then you have the wind and i am inspecting Power Outages throughout the afternoon. Wind gust. Just because a lot of you dont see the gusts registering does with sustained winds. Look at this one chill. 20 degrees is what it is feeling like. 20 and sanford as well. Your forecast for today, kristin was talking about just how tricky the forecast will be and its all going to be dependent on the temperature. Looking for high of 33 in raleigh. 32 in durham and 36 in fayetteville. Had to tonight a wintry mix changing to snow. Small accumulations in addition to what we are receiving. 29 degrees hour overnight low and then we head into the not expecting much melting to take place but look at sunday. Plenty of sunshine. The 40s will be back really nice and we will have earned but that point in time. 48 on monday with plenty of sunshine. Next chance for rain, plain old rain tuesday and wednesday. We have been watching closely the roadways and how this has impacted so lets check in for the latest on your traffic conditions. Traffic is a mess. We have many . Reported around the area. Take a live look at i95 and u. S. 70 where you can see that we still have some precipitation falling we also have a little bit of a mess and some spots. Pitches and overpasses going to be the biggest issue. Another picture from trinity road and edwards mill road, traffic moving smoothly. I40 moving okay. Bridges and overpasses are spots. We will have plenty more weather and traffic coming up. For now we will send things back. With snow and ice creating treacherous conditions we have a huge rack we are watching and johnston county. I know theres a lot of action on the scene right now, just in. Reporter a ups trailer has blocked i95 north. We are at the interstate on interstate 40. We were on our way north. As another major accident weve been telling you about. We cannot get to it because we are stuck here. They shut down this road right about the time we got here in this tractortrailer was on its side. Have lifted it up. We are hoping that perhaps in the next few minutes traffic to move north. Let me give you a look a look at how much of this has backed up. You can see the interchange with 40 right there. We are not sure how far back this goes but when we were coming here south of the interchange theres another accident. That gives you a real idea impact paints a picture at how dangerous interstate 95 is. We are seeing reports of multiple accidents. We will continue to bring you updates as we get them on the situation and others around the i am justin welcome back. I am stefan chase. We are heading northwest on the triangle. We are checking in with like its picked up steam, reporter we are seeing a lot of big fluffy snow. We saw it two dot trucks go through. Steam, right . 1022 emma wright . I will show you what it is. Its a good amount of snow here. We have not seen too many cars here. This guy is the lone driver to the left few minutes but we did see cars out here around 7 00 a. M. When the normal commute time would be. As the snow picked up the cars dropped off and people know its not safe to be driving. Although we did see a few clouds the road is covered was with i took a short ride to the gas station. The road was passable. There was no ice like we have been seeing. The thick snow makes for some slick driving. If youre out and about in roxborough and person county, you want to take it slow pearson county. Thank you for that update. Snow is breaking records, not just in North Carolina but in arkansas. Six inches fell in little rock. The winter storms shut down schools and State Government offices. The snow continues to fall. The major winter storm is moving up the east coast. 13 inches of snow can get will fall in an hour. From the today show along i 81 in virginia the crew was headed towards dc and the nbc news unit headed there. On wncn nightly news with lester holt. They said they have not gotten any snow yet. They could get up to 30 inches of nightmare. [ laughter ] nightmare. We are going to break down right, guys . Right, guys . Actually we are heading out to mario. Hes been getting great pictures for us. He sure has. Mario, what are you seeing out there . Was actually moved over to the downtown transportation center. Let me set step back. You can see this is the only thing moving. The bus depot is coming in and out. Lets spin you around this way. Coming in now. Weve seen taxicabs coming in. In Downtown Durham this is the durham city and county trash and recycling has been school is out. Have not seen a lot of traffic on the roads and lets plan down to the ground here and give you look at what it is like. You can see its a sick scott coating of slush. We expect this will pick up and get worse as the day progresses and the storm progresses. You can see the Durham Police here on this side patrolling making sure everything is safe and everybody is okay. That is what it looks like here on the ground in Downtown Durham. The only thing we see moving are these buses. If you have to come out you need to get to them and i suggest you jump on the bus. Conditions are not safe. Reporting live, i am mario boone. Mario all that slush is dangerous. As soon as it dips down then at freezes again. Download our news and weather app. Updates and breaking news 24 hours a day. Welcome back. We are happy you are with us instead of being on the roadways. We talked to North Carolina state troopers and they said at 7 00 a. M. There were five accidents. We are well past 80. So with icy conditions and snow thats out there you have to be extremely careful. We have to find out about this forecast. We are going to see sunshine here shortly but to be honest with you were just getting were expecting the rest of the day to look at freezing precipitation and snow and freezing rain and then it can wrap up. Before we get to that lets talk about what we have going on now. This is a live picture we are at 27 degrees and we are looking at downtown raleigh. You cant see much visibility. This is a loop over the past two hours and snow from central portions of hartnett county north towards virginia and as we work further south towards cumberland and samson freezing rain falling for you. We will stop this and lets take a tour. Steady snow continues to fall around oxford. This is the northern portion of granville county. We saw, we saw emma wright reporting over 2 inches of snow term looking messy this morning. Were still tracking snow falling around the room down towards chapel hill. Bringing you and to a closer look, remember say 15 minutes ago or 30 minutes ago we were dealing with more sleep in and around the area, we are looking at cold air setting up shop. Snow continues to fall down towards holly springs. Sliding even further south look at all of this freezing rain. It has been falling for about an hour or so if not more right on i95. This is fayetteville and grays creek all under pink and springlake back towards hope county towards raeford. This will accumulate especially on elevated surfaces. And power lines down and its going to be an issue for Power Outages later this afternoon and into the evening and look at the rest of the triangle. Silas city you had over an inch of snow an hour or so ago. You continue to track snow there. We will see more of this move throughout the day. Winter storm warning stays in effect through the rest of the day into tomorrow at 6 00 p. M. All of these areas under this winter storm warning and this includes triangle, fayetteville and areas towards the virginia border and a Winter Weather advisory in effect for a few counties. For more on when we can see most of this move out and what we will be dealing with ill send it over to kristen ketchell. We have been dealing with this mess all morning. As we head through the rest of this morning the master the an hour by hour forecast. We do have the best chance for heavier snow north of the triangle. It points back to the west and definitely a possibility we have mostly snow for the rest of the event. As we head through this afternoon and early this evening we may see rain mixing in in its going to be dependent on what the temperature is on it made change over to plain cold rain and it will continue as we head through this evening and into the overnight hours before we see the colder air wrapping back around. Snow showers tonight and into our morning tomorrow before the precipitation does wrap up. We will turn things back over to alyssa. We stressed over these community these accumulations, we continue to watch. Totals are towards the lower end of this range. 123 inches possible including seven portions of wade coming and lee county and towards Halifax County as well and we are looking at the three to five band. This includes durham, orange, chad, and northern portions of wade county a big spread from northern portions to the southern end and they said they just have a dusting of snow and to be honest with you you could receive an inch of snow. Look towards northern orange and northern portions of granville and macklin bill and virginia five to 10 inches of snow possible. On either and the snow and the ice this is not a record setting event. Combined the two and its nasty. A quarter of an inch of ice possible in these areas shaded in white. Head to the areas shaded in pink. Right now latest one got at 22 Miles Per Hour. 17 Miles Per Hour and done. The rest of you are not dealing with breezy conditions in tonight. 33 in raleigh. Kristin was pinpointing where changes to rain versus freezing rain. If we stay colder we will be in the freezing rain category and ice totals will be higher. 32 at or below freezing in durham. Getting above that mark and fayette will fayetteville. The wintry mix will fall into the upper 20s. Mike and stefan . We want to take you to a press conference where the governor is getting ready to address the media. Thats right. This is taking place in raleigh. Lets listen in. Our secretary of transportation, colonel william gray Highway Patrol and general greg who is over our carried guard and mike with he and his Emergency Response team continue to do a great job. Mike i appreciate your leadership very much. I want to thank first the people of North Carolina for following the lead and staying off the roads, in most cases, and taking care of their families and understand that their Public Safety is our number one priority. In addition to the safety of Emergency Personnel throughout the state from the mountains to i also want to thank the Business Community and School Boards and mayors and local Police Chiefs and all of the volunteer Agency Partners that we are working with hand in hand during the last 24 hours and will continue to work with for the next 48 hours. They have implemented the right measures to keep people in North Carolina safe and we continue to do everything we can to fulfill our goal. However, we have some sadness and that is their have been two more fatalities a person who was injured Late Wednesday did pass away from the injuries and families. In addition, early this morning i95 where one person has died. A major trucking accident with several trucks and a car. Sadly we had a death in Johnson County on i95 where we are at this point in time. Primarily we have cars coming out of virginia where there is a lot of snow and they think when they get into North Carolina because the roads are clear they think there safe and they increase their speeds and that is not the case. Parts of i95 a very dangerous dangerous when you come into North Carolina and we are asking people to please be aware just because there is not snow it does not mean the roads are not safe and that is of great concern which i will talk about shortly. So we are asking everyone to please be very careful and stay off the roads if you dont need to be on the roads. Spend time with your family and enjoy time with the family. Brief weather update. As you can see by the screen to my right we are having weather issues from across the state from the mountains to the coast in asheville you are seeing a u having some serious snow accumulation and expect more snow accumulation over the next several hours up to 1 00 a. M. This morning from tonight into early morning. As you see in the charlotte region in the rural areas outside the charlotte region we are having some snow accumulation. The dilemma there in the charlotte region is where the possibility of half inch of ice and thats going to be a major issue possibly with Power Outages and thats our major concern in that area right along with difficult driving. The coastal counties along the coast, we are seeing some heavy rain. It does not look like we are going to have any major flooding but we are probably going to have each erosion but we are concerned about the rain and we are having Ice Accumulation in the greenville Elizabeth City area and smaller towns in and around that that is exempt from this is the wilmington southeastern part of our state and Morehead City area where its primarily rain and we hope it stays that way. The issue across the state is very strong gusty winds which could cause Power Outages and again make it difficult for safety personnel. But very, very strong gust wind. This is a primary concern where we have heavy ice again primarily in the charlotte region although we are not sure of the Ice Accumulation in the mountains and also the greensboro triad area is also going to be having some serious ice and also serious snow. We will be glad to answer more questions about that from the experts in those areas. As i mentioned before, we stated we have declared a state of emergency which has enabled us necessary resources to respond to the storm. Weve already had the federal Emergency Management liaison here at our Emergency Response Team Headquarters and we will seek federal help if we need it, when the time comes. Ive issued and issued executive orders to waive our to waive some of the restrictions on truck drivers. This is important for companies throughout the state and essential for Agricultural Operations very important for potential fuel supply issues. The power companies, i want to thank them across the state. They have a big job on their hands. They like our dot workers, they are dispersed where the potential Power Outages will be. Most of them are in the far border and in and around charlotte. Right now the latest reports show about 6000 Power Outages across the state, mostly in the mountains and charlotte region. Of course we expect that number to fluctuate as we see high winds across the state and also power lines. That is a concern that we have. I have asked her state Human Resources director neil adverse weather policy for all state and Government Employees private sector to carefully consider the weather condition and follow the states leads and it looks like most of the private sector have done that and i would like to thank them for doing this. Fortunately with technology and hopefully with no Power Outages a lot of these people can do work from home. I want everyone to take their our state Highway Patrol is doing an outstanding job and colonel gray will give a further report. We are working on the quick clearance law that enables them to move or tow vehicles that man p traffic or block shoulders and preventing transportation crews from treating our road. Most road issues are on i95 and i40 up and the mountains between winston and nashville where i think its gone down to one lane on each side and we have issues they are which secretary tennyson will review the details on. I am pleased with our policy about checking abandoned vehicles. This is something we take very seriously. We do not want any individual stranded on the roads. Our Highway Patrol officers are checking every vehicle is stranded to make sure no one is in it. If there someone in it we want to help them. Notify other future people traveling by that those cars have been checked for a possible occupant. I think thats been an outstanding policy that was initiated in the past two years. I would like to thank colonel gray and his team for that effort. The National Guard, under general lusk, has done an outstanding job. Theyve mobilized 100 soldiers to work handinhand with our men and women in black and gray with the Highway Patrol. The state Highway Patrol has responded to 571 calls for assistance. A very high number from yesterday. It has increased substantially. We have identified about 2530 abandoned cars out the state at this point in time. As you been hearing all morning, most of the School Systems across the state are closed. We are having significant lane closure on several routes. I 26, henderson and asheville and i40 near black mountain. Also as of 9 30 all lanes of i 95 near kenly are closed due to a major vehicle accident with two cars and three tractor trailers and thats what we did have a loss of life, tragically. So i95 has been a mess. And by the way early this morning i dont watching video cameras on roads throughout North Carolina and again, where i am seeing the accidents is where it looks like its a safe road and people are speeding because they assume its safe because they dont see snow. That is our greatest concern now. Obviously the weather conditions will continue to change. As nick might say a concern we have right now is some of the mixture is going from snow to rain and back to snow back to snow to freezing ice. The rain comes it is taking off the materials that dot did such a good job of putting on. That is a concern when the black ice comes the material that we have lay down will not work and weve got and we ask the media to clearly communicate that to the general public and nick might have more details on that. Im very proud. I think North Carolina has the best Emergency Response team in the country. I am also very proud of the cities and counties that are helping us with this. They are responding to the storm. They are poised to facilitate a quick recovery, should there be a need. Again, we dont want to have to have that need and thats why we continue to encourage people to stay off of the roads. Our safety tips, the most critical partners we have are the states Emergency Response want to thank the media for continuing to do an excellent job in communicating across the state. We ask you to continue to be accurate and encourage safety over anything else. It is vital that our individuals and families also make sure that they are prepared with the proper goods in their homes so they dont have to go out and i want to thank the media for communicating that. 1st and foremost continue to watch local Weather Forecast and stay safe. Now is not the time to take any unnecessary trips or take risks. Avoid speeding and traveling. Possible. If you do get on the roads please be very, very careful and do not speed. If you must travel, reduce the speed and leave plenty of room between you and other vehicles again, a combination of heavy outages. Something my wife reminded me of last night that i did not mention and that is nick sure to check with your neighbors especially if Power Outages go out. This is a time to help your neighbor especially if they are need of heat and light and flashlights and other things. This is the time to check on everyone and also my wife has again reminded me in a very professional way to also check your pets and the neighbors during this cold weather. We want to make sure they are safe also. Want to encourage all of the citizens, if you have not done so already, please download the mobile app. Its a mobile app to give you uptodate information across the state and we would like to ask the media to continue to let the public know of the ready and see app. With that im going to ask secretary perry to give an update on some of the centers readync app and i would like to thank him and his great secretary perry, thank you very much. Thank you. Frank perry with Public Safety. Three years ago the governor said oneword, collaboration and it is hard to envision how we could have more collaboration during times like this. For example, we want to think volunteer agencies as the governor alluded to. They are called volunteer organizations activated during disasters and they include the Salvation Army army and baptist men and methodist men and the american red cross. But they do is coordinate with the state Emergency Response team, ser t. And the volunteer organizations help with our efforts here with the state Emergency Response team. That includes so many people. Checking on stranded motorists, checking on people who may be without power, they include daily in the fbi who report test directly to the fbi and the governor and the fbi is other federal agencies. But one agency we often forget during these time is fully activated when the Highway Patrol or guard our. Are promoting Public Safety is the state Fusion Center. The Fusion Center is up and running. To monitor complaints about crime and people in distress, either because of power failures or because of other episodes caused by the disaster. s we want to thank the sbi for operating so, we want to think the sbi with the Fusion Center with the Emergency Response team. I want to thank the general in the kernel and the director. The drivein was quite manageable and we thank them even though weve had sad fatalities picked out i guess secretary tennyson from dot. On how we handled the roads and governors request and it takes time to consider whether we need to see for yourself. Dont go see for yourself. Stay home. Overnight and working on snow and ice across the state. I want to answer question that some people have asked about why do you not see the blades it down scraping all the time. The situation is that you are not always able to remove what is there until it has been treated with salt and until it has been broken up and until there is enough to plow. Just because we have trucks out with plows on them it doesnt mean they have to be scraping. Would put out nearly 2 gallons 2 million gallons of salt brine in addition in anticipation of the event which helps to keep eyes from bonding to the roadway. Reviews more than 12,000 tons of salt and more than 5000 tons of the sand salt mixture to treat roads across the state in specific areas. Cruz will continue to be out in force to address roadways and we do move cruise around to deal with greater concentration in problem areas and will be doing that as we are able to identify those areas that can afford to have a crew shifted. The priority order for handling roadways, we have 80,000 miles of state maintained roads and we have to have some priority. You cant do it all at once. We start with the interstates and move to primary routes into major routes and then to lower volume roads. We cant be everywhere all at we handled the highest demand areas the key is to not have much traffic out there. Helpful. In that regard we have been working in partnership with the Highway Patrol with abandoned vehicles and theyve had to initiate towing a 90 vehicles 9 30 a. M. There may have been others. To expand a little bit on the governors comments about lane closures just illustrate the breadth of those. I95 south the left lane is closed at exit 102 near selma. I40 west raleigh the right lane is closed at exit 290 297 at lake wheeler road. I40 east a shoulder lane closed, exit 210 which is nc 68, i40 east Winston Salem the right lane is closed at exit 195 just nc 109. Is closed at exit 337 due to an accident in meadowbrook road. I40 east raleigh the right lane is closed at exit two. I95 south and the governor mentioned was a major accident. I40 west in raleigh, we have a left lane closed at exit 284th and again these things are intermittent and may have been at exits where there are multiple liens of the exit to make sure that we can treat the area to keep people safe on some portion of it. We also have the nc dot state farm Safety Patrol vehicles out. We have relocated the vehicles that would normally be working in willington to move into the area where we have greater need. In eastern part of the state we have not yet experienced major issues along the outer banks. That this could well turn into a noreaster and give some we are prepositioned over cook the other forms of transportation with which we work including trained Public Transit have been impacted by the storm. You will need to contact the local systems to determine those. As i said yesterday, our dmv offices function whenever they can. There are right now at least or a. M. 72 drivers offices are closed. All of this information is available on our website if you can check nc dot. Gov dmv you offices. The license plate agencies also have the same challenges. 20 of those that are in the state are open. 82 are closed. You can see that we have a substantial number that are not able to operate. Continue support Law Enforcement and help out with monitoring abandoned cars. Weve assisted about 100 motorists and gotten them to places of safety. Thanks very much. Excellent job, nick. Carl great will give more of an update on Highway Patrol activity. Think you. Thank you, governor. And good morning. First of all i want to thank my troopers for the hard work and dedication. Needless to say they have been very busy and the last couple of hours. Highway patrol has all available personnel working. We have asked chip commanders to monitor individual weather events and search resources at the weather and traffic dictate. On i40 at i95 we have our hands full. We hold our troopers out of the Southern Region of i95 and they will go to assistant help clear up. Since midnight with responded to 571 collisions and over 800 calls for Service Across the state. Mentioned, four fetal collisions have occurred due to express my condolences to the family members of those tragic events. Patrol will maintain 24 7 coverage across the state to answer calls and to ensure that the disabled and stranded motorists persisted in getting to a safe location. As always, we were close with the dot Emergency Management, the National Guard, alcohol Law Enforcement, wildlife resources, and all of our other allied Law Enforcement agencies to ensure that safety of our citizens in this endeavor. We strongly encourage everyone not to travel unless it is absolutely necessary. Lets get through this event and get the roads cleared up and then you can resume your normal daily activities. Reminder. Please do not call 911 for road conditions. Lets keep those lines open for emergency traffic only. Information going by going to 511 or nc network. Org. If you go back in your vehicle has been told you can go to our website at the department of Public Safety and it will have a link to towed and stored vehicles and you can look up where youre vehicle was towed to and how you get it back. If it was in the city check with local city police. Again, please do not drive unless you absolutely have to. It will help keep you safe in my troopers safe as well. Inc. You, sir. One thing i want to mention was this. You have a lot of dot personnel and guard personnel emergency workers and so fourth check on them also if your neighbors of them. They might need help if they are power goes out, their spouse might not be there and they are of their working trying to help people. All these people in the back row their families are calling them what about us and they are serving the state so i want to thank the wind men and women in red and the military members in this room. We have two Major Centers which have cameras across the state showing road conditions. We are watching those every minute. Theres constant communications between each region and what we are seeing on the cameras and what we are being reported to the field and thats how these men and women are adjusting resources at a moments notice notice. Its a fascinating Operation Center here and we have another when outside of charlotte that shows more of the activity. One area is on i95 and thats where we had a major accident. Again, i cannot stress if youre listening and coming in from Virginia Area and you are hearing this broadcast, please it might look safer than what the roads were in virginia because theyre having more snow there but that is not the case because of the ice. We want to prevent any further accidents. With that we will be glad to take a few questions. If you raise your hand you could recognize yourself and who you are with, please. Any questions . Yes, sir. Beau minnick wncn in raleigh. We know about the accidents and i wasnt sure what these situation was with the fourth accident. Back to i95, if we could talk a little bit more about what people, if they do need to be on i95, presumably there will be a big backup, what should people be doing in that area. First let me say the first three fatalities, the accidents occurred on wednesday evening. The most recent and one of the people just passed away from that accident. That was the third tragic death. Today on i95 and we got confirmation. Thats where we had several trucks and an individual car and i believe the person in the car lost their life. That is where that occurred. Regarding i95 i might have nick or colonel gray give us the latest update on what you recommend people do. I think we have the lanes open going one direction. Do have the latest update on that, colonel . Or were nick might have the latest right there in Johnson County . Thank you, sir. The lanes were blocked. We have one tractortrailer jackknifed there moving to get those out of the way. My recommendation is of course, as the governors, slow down and increase distance but if youre currently sitting on i 95, just be patient because as secretary tennis and medicine that area. If they get off of i95 on the side streets they could run into more problems. Be patient so we can clear as soon as possible. Our secondary roads that are more rural roads will be the most dangerous. And so those of the roads that we tend to focus the attention on the interstate highways. Thats where we have our cameras. Where i believe some fatalities have occurred out west arent secondary roads which are going to be the most a dangerous roads. Just outside of the center today they are ice. At the secondary roads whether they are city or state roads are going to be the most dangerous roads. Again, the black ice i just saw an accident in chapel hill on the camera where it does not look dangerous but that car went around and i think we had another car go off the road on the tollroad here in the raleigh area. I saw that on the camera very tough conditions. Have difficulty. Any of the questions . Yes maam . Have any National Guard strike teams need to be mobilized overnight or this morning as conditions got worse. General lusk . They have actually gotten into the flow. Out of the 12 locations we currently have 100 National Guardsmen at three of them are Branch Offices of North Carolina Emergency Management primarily for liaison and help in court need activities. The winter storm catch teams those out in humvees and other vehicles working to help assist with potential stranded motorists and doing health and welfare checks on neighbors and indeed gotten coordinated with local Law Enforcement and other agencies to do that. I do not have any statistics right now as far as hominy calls have gotten. I know they put in to work immediately upon arrival last night at 6 00. We want people to be careful in the far western the of the state. It is going frommism from i95 to the ten ten border