State Police Struggle to Keep Up with Snow-Related Accidents

The weather may be improving, but Illinois State Police say the roads in east-central Illinois were still a hazardous place to be on Monday.

Drivers were facing black ice on interstates and other highways - they were re also passing vehicles that have been left stranded on the shoulders in the hours since winds picked up and temperatures bottomed out on Sunday.

Sergeant Bill Emery with the state police post in Pesotum said blowing snow and black ice were still causing problems Monday. He said police were still working on a backlog of reports, including about 50 crashes.

"There's just not enough police and emergency personnel to handle each and every situation," Emory said on Monday. "So we're responding to each one as quickly as possible, and there's several crashes that we're not actually making a report on, if there were no injuries."

Emery said those reports will be done over the next few hours as the immediate problems go away. He said if you slide off the road, the best thing to do is to stay in your car before someone responds.

The conditions have caused two fatalities in the region. 52-year old Edith Janowski-Sherman of rural Champaign was killed Monday morning when her vehicle rolled over at the intersection of two rural roads west of Thomasboro. And Champaign County Coroner Duane Nortrhup says 52-year old Carol Theole of Effingham was helping a towing crew Sunday night when she was struck and killed by a vehicle north of Mattoon on I-57.

A spokesman with one Urbana towing firm said at midday Monday that they still had about 25 calls for help backed up, with a new one coming in every 30 seconds or so.