Two killed in weather-related Friday morning wreck in Wythe County, Va.

By: Claire Galofaro | Bristol Herald Courier
Published: February 06, 2010

BY CLAIRE GALOFARO
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER
WYTHEVILLE, Va. – As the front-end of a massive winter storm swept the region early Friday, a father and son died when a semi-truck plowed into their Dodge Caravan after they stopped to help a driver stranded on the icy interstate.
William Edward Smith Jr., 25, of Mooresburg, Tenn., was standing outside the van when the tractor-trailer lost control on the slick roadway. His father, William Edward Smith Sr., 54, of Sylva, N.C., was still inside.
Both men died at the scene.
The crash was one of hundreds across the commonwealth Friday, but the father and son were the only highway deaths in the state as of Friday afternoon.
Authorities are likening the two-day series of storms – ultimately expected to dump upwards of 20 inches of snow on Northern Virginia – to a class 2 hurricane, with winds at almost 80 mph howling across the Mountain Empire.
Because mother nature threw some rain and snow in, too, authorities are asking Virginians to stay off the roads as much as possible. Gov. Bob McDonnell on Thursday declared a state of emergency in Virginia as the stormed barrelled down on the state.
By Friday morning, the roads were wet, slushy and snowy. At 12:40 a.m., a car spun out of control near mile marker 58 on northbound Interstate 81 in Wythe County. The car teetered to a stop in the left lane.
The driver of the passing Dodge Caravan pulled over, and a nurse jumped out and ran to help the injured travelers. Moments later, a big rig swerved to miss the wrecked car, still sitting in the interstate. The rig jackknifed and swung into the minivan parked on the shoulder.
The nurse, who’d run to aid the injured in the first car that wrecked, was not hurt.
The Virginia State Police is investigating the accident. And state troopers have been busy. From midnight to 4:30 p.m. Friday, troopers responded to 557 crashes and 414 disabled vehicles.
Corinne Geller, the agency’s public relations manager, said jackknifed tractor trailers, unable to handle the icy grades, caused the biggest problems on Southwest Virginia roads.
About 7 a.m., driver Joe Soliz had enough, so he pulled his big blue truck off the interstate at a Wytheville truck stop to wait out the storm.
“There was all kinds of trouble up there,” he said. “Cars getting stuck, trucks going halfway up a hill, then sliding right back down. We just pulled off, it’s the best thing to do.”
Better safe than sorry, Soliz said.
“I’d rather drive off a cliff than hit a four-wheeler, cause you know they’ve got families in them, kids inside,” Soliz said at the truck stop at Exit 29. “But when you’ve got 80,000 pounds on your back, pushing you, it’s just hard to stop.”
Authorities warned Friday that the trouble from the storm is far from over. “There is so much water in this storm, and water is heavier than nice fluffy snow,” said Laura Southard, spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. “When you combine that with heavy winds, you get power outages.”
Tazewell County took the brunt of the damage Friday, bracing under 78 mph winds. Half the county lost power, Southard said. Some 20,000 homes across Southwest Virginia were left without electricity Friday.
Southard advised everyone to have a plan for the worst.
For road conditions, call 511 or visit 511virginia.org. For information about emergency shelters call 211 or visit 211virginia.org.