Stranded residents share stories from the snowy road

Thursday’s storm wasn’t a surprise but residents certainly didn’t expect to sit in traffic on snow covered roads for hours.

Randy Kuntz of Lehighton described his long, drawn-out ride home from work:

“I texted my wife at 4, I work down on Lehigh Street, it was a mess, Route 78 bunch of cars already spread out, cars that shouldn’t even be on the road, actually.”

He turned onto Route 309. “That became a parking lot,” he said.

In all the one-hour commute home took five hours. total, normally 45 minutes to an hour, frustration “Cars were stuck in a ditch, tractor trailers,” Kuntz said.

“That was a fast-moving storm, you weren’t stopping that. 78 was an absolute mess, it caught everybody by surprise.”

He said many people shouldn’t have been out on the road,

“It was like follow the leader,” Kuntz said.

Leslie Pope of Kunkletown said her 45-minute commute and it took 2 1/2 hrs.

She was but 4 miles from home when she came across a crash at Kunkletown and Bearpath Road.

It was a jackknifed tractor-trailer and dump truck collision.

After waiting for a long while she was told to find a different route, the road was blocked and even the EMS had to walk down the slippery road.

She then turned around only to be greeted by another crash, cutting off the way she came in.

Driving back to the first site, she met a kind local lady who helped her maneuver a few treacherous roads and she made it home safely.

“I do have to say everyone I dealt with Thursday, first responders, paramedics etc. were just concerned about me being safe and not getting hit, a far cry from what some people had to deal with,” Pope said.