Where would they have all gone had the interstate been closed? Motels/hotels is the only reasonable answer.

The concern here was information and how poorly it was handled. The interstate could,should and would have been shut down sooner had the information been acted on and transferred between departments.
We pay(remember that tax bill that comes every year and in your pay check...) for these services and we are simply not getting what we are paying for. Technology is there, we paid for it as well. Lets start using it for what it really meant to be used for or find people capable of handling the job.

I agree andiwonderwhy. Had the Interstate closed everyone would have taken other routes. This would have stranded motorists on back roads. As bad as the situation was in the end this was the best results, no one injured, lost or dead. We can take all the precautions, and force public officals to constantly attend meetings to upgrade, or realize, we are ultimately rresponsible for our decisions.

This is starting to get old(er). While I believe that there was a lack of understanding of the magnitude of the situation, it was still everyone on that interstates choice to go out into the weather. Even if they (DOT or PD) would have closed the roads down, some people still would have went out and got stranded. The communication problem started with the understated serverity of the storm, not with how the first responders and Police handled the situation. Police, Firefighters, EMT's react to a situation and offer some training to prevent these situations from happening....it is still up to the individual people to make the choice (and or decision) to listen or not to. This is still a free country, there are just some of the people that think the government should be the blame when things go wrong, or the government should be more preventive when it is still an individual choice.